indigenous culture and architecture in - sahanz definitions of architecture that accommodate...

74 FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 18:1

Figure 1: SAHANZ scholar Deidre Brown has analysed the thatched and woven Maori house. This example of

a house porch was photographed at Hawkes Bay in the 1890s, showing raupo ceiling, painted rafters, tukutuku

wall panel, and flax mat.Photograph by Samuel Carnell (1832-1920).

Source: Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, Ref. 1/2-055340-G.

75

This paper retrospectively examines the development of architectural history and theory within the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ), with primary reference to the indigenous cultures of the South Pacific and South-East Asia geographical regions. Through a reading of some 100 papers with indigenous references or themes, published in either the conferenceproceedings1 of SAHANZ since 1984, or in its journal Fabrications2since 1990, the paper highlights some historiographical differences within the research corpus, particularly between the research trajectories of scholars in Australia and New Zealand. Of principal significance are the varying themes and methodological approaches that have shaped the SAHANZ scholarship on indigenous environments and architectures in the last 25 years. An overarching preoccupationinthisbodyofwritingistheformulationandpoliticisationofalternate definitions of architecture that accommodate indigenous constructs and archetypes. The ensuing discussion then addresses a number of recurring themes which fall under the banner of “the representation of indigeneity” in and through architecture, namely the encoding of meanings into architecture and place, religious beliefs and values as generators of architecture, cultural change processes in architecture, the interpretation of changing architectural traditions, and the indigeneity of metropolitan settings.

The time depth, and hence architectural antiquity, of the various indigenous groups dwelling in the study area is quite diverse. According to archaeological and genetic evidence, the earliest migratory groups of modern humans originated in Africa and travelled eastwards from mainland Asia, eventually coming to inhabit Australia and New Guinea some 60,000 years ago.3Theythen culturally evolved into many hundreds of distinct language groups or tribes. A much more recent set of migrations (6,000 years ago) occurred in theHoloceneperiodwhenAustronesianlanguagegroupsfromTaiwanandsouthern China extended east along the New Guinea coast and then dispersed throughout the Pacific.4 This included the first arrivals of Maori to Aotearoa New Zealand from their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki, which occurred little more than 1,000 years ago, continuing to the thirteenth century. The area ofanalysisinthispaperpertainstothoseAustronesianlanguagegroupsin

Indigenous Culture and Architecture in the South Pacific Region25 Years of SAHANZ Research

Paul Memmott & James Davidson

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

76

Insular South-east Asia, from Taiwan through Indonesia and the Philippines, along the coast of New Guinea through the islands of Melanesia and Micronesia, and east into the Polynesian triangle extending between Hawaii, New Zealand and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Archaeologists name many of the groups in the central part of this region the Lapita people (after their Lapita pottery).5AbelTasman’s “discovery” of Australia and New Zealand in the 1640s opened up a British and European chapter in the region’s history. Captain James Cook proclaimed Australia a British possession in 1770, with settlement commencing in 1788; New Zealand was annexed as a British Colony in 1840 upon the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi with Maori chiefs.

Researchonindigenouspeoplesinthestudyareacommencedwithintheemerging social science of anthropology in the mid to late nineteenth century, including some documentation of indigenous architectures within the sub-field of material culture. The earliest interest in indigenous architecture in the south Pacific region from architectural researchers, however, did not commence until the 1970s with those researchers drawing as much on anthropology as upon their own discipline; but even then, there was little interest from mainstream architectural historians.

By the 1990s, these architectural researchers and their growing numbers of postgraduatestudentshadbecomeincreasinglyconcernedwiththeprocessesofcultural change, both with respect to indigenous societies and their architecture, and to colonial societies and their architectural processes. Despite minimal engagementwiththepostcolonialandpostmoderntheoristswhohadbeenemerging in cultural studies and anthropology during the 1980s, the authors aroundSAHANZwerecentrallypositionedinthesubjectmatterofthesetheories, addressing topics on indigenous architecture that ranged from the binary analysis of power roles in architectural decision-making (colonist versus colonised), to the adaptation of indigenous architectural traditions and use of place to the globalising processes of modernity. A deeper significance of this literature review is to question the biases and prejudices in the architectural profession (as well as in architectural publishing) as to how the architectural traditions of “others” are acknowledged and as to the ethical terms of their engagement in theory and practice.

Of 100 SAHANZ papers perused by the authors, 79 clearly addressed or referenced themes on indigenous architecture and/or cultures. Within these 79 papers, the most intensely reported subject group are New Zealand’s Maori (in some 39 papers), followed by Australian Aboriginal groups (twelve papers) and then Papuan New Guineans and Cook Islanders, the topic of six papers each. Some ten further Asian and Pacific groups are discussed in only one or two papers each, with a number of papers addressing broader cultural groupings. Five, for instance, deal more generally with Polynesia (Table 1). Whilst there

FABRICATIONS – JSAHANZ 18:1

77MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

Table 1: Distribution of SAHANZ Papers on Indigenous Themes, by Subject Cultural Groups and Periods of Publication

Period of Publication

Cultural Groups 1984-1989

1990-1994

1995-1999

2000-2004

2005-2007

Sub-totals

Australian Aboriginal 2 2 4 4 12

Cook Islanders 1 2 3 6

Fijian 1 1

Global 1 1

Hawaiian 1 1

Indonesian groups(inc. Balinese, Toraja,Javanese)

2 1 3

Kiribati (GilbertIslanders)

1 1 2

Malaysian groups(Iban, Kenyah)

2 2

Maori 2 1 7 22 7 39

Maya 1 1

Micronesian (general) 1 1 2

Oriental (general) 1 1

Papuan/New Guinean 1 5 6

Polynesian (general) 1 4 1 6

Rapa Nui/EasterIsland

1 1 2

Samoan 1 1

Tahitian 1 1

Tikopia (EllisIslanders)

1 1

Sub-totals: 4 5 20 41 18 88

78

isclearlyastrengthofresearchonMaoriandAustralianAboriginal(hereaftersimply referenced as “Aboriginal”), with some coverage of a few other groups, thereareclearlymanyindigenousculturesintheregiontowhichtheSAHANZmembers have not paid attention to date: especially the groups in Indonesia, the PhilippinesandSouth-eastAsiawheretherearemanysubstantialindigenouspopulations. This does not imply that the architecture of these indigenous groupshasnotbeenresearchedbyotherscholars(someofwhomarealsoarchitects), but rather that none of this material has formed part of the SAHANZ profile for research into indigenous themes and cases.6

The Development of SAHANZ Scholarship in Indigenous ArchitectureWhen SAHANZ was formally established in 1985 it was partly modelled on the American Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), which had as one of its objectives the fostering of an appreciation of the architectures of all cultures. SAHANZ, however, did not adopt any such similar objective, which would have clearly signalled the inclusion of indigenous cultures in its scope of interests.7

HowthendidSAHANZscholarshiponindigenousarchitectureoriginate?This is a complex historical investigation in its own right but several key events and personnel can be briefly mentioned. In the 1970s there was no substantial architectural interest in indigenous architecture in Australia and New Zealand, neither from within architectural schools nor from the architectural profession. In both countries it had been assumed in the 1960s, premised upon government policies of assimilation, that indigenous peoples would come to occupy western housing and integrate into western socio-economic systems. Traditional architectures were more the research domain of anthropologists, topics of ethnographic recording for posterity, or assigned to specimen collections in museums. Architectural schools in Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s were largelypreoccupiedwithtransferringEuropeanandAmericanmodernismintolocalpracticeandsimultaneouslytransmittingtheclassicalarchitecturalhistoryof Sir Bannister Fletcher.

Subtle pedagogical changes began in the 1970s with influences arising from diverse sources: the gradual popularisation of vernacular architecture studies; the advent of architectural psychology and man-environment studies, later re-named environmental psychology and behaviour-environment systems respectively; the shift in indigenous political policies from assimilation to self-determination, and hence cultural expression, in such Commonwealth nations as Australia and New Zealand; and the inspiration of the United States’ Civil Rights Movement to those advocating indigenous rights (including land rights). From this educational and political context a handful of scholars with architectural backgroundscommencedtacklingtheethnographicrecordingofindigenousarchitectural traditions. One early inspirational scholar (from outside the region)



Table 2: SAHANZ Authors with Two or More Published Papers on Indigenous Themes, and the Periods of the Publications

Period of Publication

1984-1989

1990-1994

1995-1999

2000-2004

2005-2007

New Zealand Authors

Austin, M. 1 (1989) 1 2 6 1

Brown, D. 2 3 1

Budgett, J. 1 2

Engels-Schwarzpaul, T 1 1

Linzey, M 3 1

McCarthy, C. 2 1

McKay, B. 1 4 1

Refiti, A. 2

Treadwell, S. 1 3 1 1

Treadwell, J 2

1 2 8 25 9

Australian Authors

Fowler, M. 4

Memmott, P. 1 (1994) 1 1

Ting, J. 2

1 1 5 2

who has not been adequately credited was the American-born Professor Wallace “Mack” Ruff (1912-99) who established the Architectural Heritage Centre of PapuaNewGuineaintheDepartmentofArchitectureatthePapuaNewGuineaUniversity of Technology in Lae.8Thisethno-architecturalprogrammestartedasthe Village Studies Program in 1973 and continued until 1981.9

A later friend and colleague of Ruff’s was Michael (Mike) Austin who after graduating in architecture at Auckland University College (since 1962, the University of Auckland), studied some anthropology and Maori Studies, attended the Ekistics Centre (Athens) in 1973, and then completed his PhD in 1976 at the University of Auckland on Polynesian influences in New Zealand

80

architecture. From that time, Austin had a pivotal role in educating New Zealand architecture students at the University of Auckland and Unitec (Auckland) on cross-cultural environmental issues. Most of SAHANZ’s New Zealand contributors to indigenous architectural themes have either been taught or influenced by Austin. He also later taught at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology in 1987, 1993 and 1997. One of his students, Deidre Brown goes so far as to argue that Austin’s doctoral dissertation (entitled “Polynesian Architecture in New Zealand”) legitimised Maori architecture as a field for architectural academics, largely ignored until that date by such, but nevertheless having been a subject of analysis for up to a century by anthropologists, ethnographers, Maori historians and Maori political analysts.10 Similarly, Peter Wood credits Austin’s thesis as a seminal work in this regard.11

Whilst Austin was undertaking his PhD in New Zealand, Paul Memmott (one of the co-authors of this paper) was carrying out his PhD in anthropology and architecture with the Lardil Aboriginal people from the Gulf of Carpentaria. (He was well aware of Ruff’s work at the time but knew little of Austin’s.) In 1976, Memmott established the Aboriginal Data Archive at the Department of Architecture, University of Queensland, which was formalised into the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (AERC) in 1995. He then built up a school of postgraduate students who have since contributed most of the papers to SAHANZ on Australian indigenous themes.

(A third significant SAHANZ contribution to indigenous architecture scholarshiphasbeenMartinFowler’sworkonPapuaNewGuineastemmingfrom his PhD research (University of Melbourne) on cultural transactions between colonialism, modernity and tradition in three Papuan societies and its subsequent impact on architecture and settlement. Fowler was raised in Papua New Guinea, being the son of a medical orderly teacher who stayed there after the Second World War. Like Memmott, Fowler was aware of the Village Studies Programme at Lae, and was interacting with Ruff’s successors at the PNG University of Technology in the mid-1970s, these including Ken Costigan, Gordon Holden, Neville Quarry and Adrian Boddy.)

WhenAustinandMemmottcommencedtheirindependentresearchtrajectories in Oceania and Australia respectively in the early 1970s, each established a broad frame of people-environment relations in which to position their research interests relative to traditional architectures and related topics. Both were interested in indigenous geographies and navigation; in traditional territoriality and socio-spatial/socio-geographical organisation; in the sacred histories and myths of creation and origin, and their manifestation in cultural landscape, place, settlement and building symbolism; in indigenous constructs of time and space and how they effect environmental usage and meaning; in externally oriented lifestyles and appropriate architectural design; and in


81

theprocessofculturalchangeandtheimpactofcolonialismonindigenousarchitectural practices and cultural identity.

Austin’s first paper at a SAHANZ conference was also the first on a Maori topic: “Landscape and the New Zealand Maori” (Canberra, 1989).12Itcontextualised the engineering and construction of Maori fortified settlement, or pa, in the cultural landscape of named sacred sites created by ancestral culture heroes – a theme to which he would return in his keynote address to the twentieth conference (Sydney, 2003), and a landscape typology that others would address at later SAHANZ conferences.13Memmott’sscholarshiptookasimilarapproachwithemphasisofAboriginalsheltersandcampswithin seasonal patterns of movement and economic exploitation, and with due attention to ethno-geography.14 Austin extended his writing on cultural landscape in some of his later papers, alluding to cultural seascapes, navigation, boat symbolism, Pacific migration history and the application of boat technology to land-based architecture.15AustinandMemmottalsosharedastrongemphasison the external orientation of indigenous lifestyles and its cultural impact on architectural and settlement configuration and socio-spatial properties.16

ThesetheoreticalinterestsofbothAustinandMemmottdidmuchtoshape subsequent themes and approaches on the indigenous and bi-cultural architectureofAustraliaandNewZealandatSAHANZconferencesandinFabrications from the end of the 1980s.

New Zealand historians had minimal collective involvement in the early phase of SAHANZ until the 1990 conference in Melbourne, at which the keynote address (unfortunately not published) was given by a Maori art historian Jonathon Mané-Wheoki. Although there was a record eight New Zealanders in attendance in 1990, and although the 1991 conference was held for the first time in New Zealand (in Christchurch), the New Zealand membership had risen to only 25 in number by 2003, between one-fifth and one-sixth of

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

Figure 2: Entrance to the Maori Marae or Meeting House at Orakei, the site of a Maori settlement of

the Ngati Whatua (tribal group), that is now an urban enclave within metropolitan Auckland.

Photography by Paul Memmott.

82

the total membership at that time.17DespitetheirminorityintheSAHANZmembership, the New Zealanders, through their contribution of papers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, have nonetheless made the largest contribution to indigenous architectural research. Austin has been the most prolific New Zealand contributor in this field, being the most senior researcher and mentor or teacher for most of his colleagues. Like Memmott, Austin intensified his postgraduate teaching during the 1990s and as an outcome Austin and his group presented over twenty papers to SAHANZ during the period 2000 to 2005.

The first paper on Australian Aboriginal culture to be published by SAHANZ was Graham Speed’s “Australian Aboriginal Shelters” given at the 1987 Conference (Adelaide). This was an isolated paper that failed to engage the already established ethnography for, as in New Zealand, there did exist alegacyofresearchonAboriginalethno-architecturethathadbeencollatedover 100 years by anthropologists and ethnographers.18TheninthSAHANZconference (Geelong, 1992) focused specifically on Asian and Australasian themes with short sessions called “Traditional” and “Vernacular”. Significant papers were presented by David Rapaport on Toraja architecture in Sulawesi, and Gunawan Tjahjono on Javenese architecture and place, as well as a paper by Richard Aitken on the Oriental and Oceanic influences on Anglo-Australian and New Zealand architectures. Unfortunately none of these scholars gave papersonindigenousarchitectureatlaterSAHANZconferencesandtherehasbeennoconferencetodatethathasfocusedasseriouslyonSoutheastAsian scholarship.19AsecondisolatedpaperonAboriginalarchitecturewasMemmott’s keynote address to the 1994 conference in Brisbane, entitled “From the ’Curry to the ’Weal: Aboriginal Town Camps and Compounds of the Western Back-Blocks,” which described self-constructed town camps or fringe settlements on the outskirts of Australian towns (commonly termed “squatter settlements” in the international literature), and which had been ignored bymainstreamAustralianhistoriansaswellasbyscholarsoftheSAHANZcommunity.20

TheformulationofmoretheoreticalanalysesonindigenousarchitecturescontinuedtobeencouragedthroughthemedsessionsatthreelaterSAHANZconferences. The “Cross-Cultural Issues” theme at the Launceston in 1999 included papers by Austin, Brown, Bill McKay and Sarah Treadwell from New Zealand and by Memmott and Carroll Go-Sam from Australia. The 2000 conference in Wellington included the session “Post-European and Indigenous Architectural History”, chaired by Brown, with papers on indigenous topics from both within and outside of the session. The contribution was mainly by New Zealanders (Austin, Brown, Ngarino Ellis, Michael Linzey, Christine McCarthy, Anna Petersen, Albert Refiti, and Wood21), which drew a strong


83

criticismoftheAustralianmembershipfromonememberoftheaudienceonthefailureofthelattertoclearlyacknowledgeandpromoteanunderstandingof Aboriginal architectural history in their scholarship.22 Consequently, at the nineteenth annual conference (Brisbane, 2002), Memmott was invited to convene an “Architecture + Building Traditions” session which brought together Austin, Ellen Andersen, Brown, McKay and Refiti of New Zealand with James Davidson, Shaneen Fantin, Fowler, Go-Sam, Stephen Long and TimothyO’RourkeofAustralia23 – thus creating a more balanced and mature contribution on Polynesian, Melanesian and Aboriginal topics.

TheyoungerscholarsfosteredbyresearchcommunitiesbasedinAucklandand Brisbane have continued to contribute to SAHANZ conferences. A central strengthforSAHANZhasbeentheemergenceofanumberofindigenousandbi-cultural scholars including Brown, Ellis and Andersen from New Zealand, Go-Sam and Kevin O’Brien from Australia, and Refiti from Samoa.24

Methodological ApproachesTo some extent, factions among and tensions between SAHANZ members have existed from its outset, pitching empiricist historianship against theoretical preoccupations. “The extent to which papers should be theoretically informed continues to attract discussion among members,” wrote Julia Gatley in 2003.25This difference in approaches is visible to some extent within the contributions on indigenous architectures. (For example, contrast Fowler’s account of the history of Melanesian influences on the work of western architects in Papua New Guinea with the more theoretical interests of Refiti, Michael Tawa, and Christoph Schnoor.26) Two further methodological approaches are, however, clearly apparent in this SAHANZ literature. One employs an anthropological methodology to record the knowledge systems of indigenous groups, combining such techniques as participant observation, structured or semi-structured interviewing, field observation of architectural practice and usage, often employing photography, linguistic analysis and analysis of earlier ethnographic documentation.27 We also see the convergence of this approach with an empirical historical method and its emphasis on primary archival sources, pictorial imagesandmeasuredarchitecturaldrawingsinanattempttoreconstructpasttraditions that are no longer practiced. This fourth approach can be best termed “salvage architectural ethnography”, particularly when there are no longer living informantswhowitnessedorparticipatedinthearchitecturalprocessesorevents under study.

A proficient technical application of this last approach that draws as much on pictorial representation as it does on contemporaneous text, is Treadwell’sarchitecturaldiscourseanalysisofalternateculturalreadingsofthe mid-nineteenth century church Rangiatea at Otaki, New Zealand.28In

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

84

addition to drawing on the perceptions of artists, travellers and ecclesiological commentators of the time, Treadwell overlays the more recent ethnographic understandingsofcustomaryMaoriarchitectureanditspost-contacttransformationsasdocumentedbyarchaeologistsandotherarchitectslikeAustin.

Ifpost-modernwritinginculturalstudiescanbecriticisedasopeningadisjunction between “actual” and “theoretical” culture, this is certainly not the case with the SAHANZ literature on indigenous architecture, with a good proportion of the papers being in the empirical or ethnographic modes.29NewZealand-based researchers who have used fieldwork as a primary source for their SAHANZ papers include Austin (in the early to mid-1970s while working on his PhD research into Polynesian meeting houses), Jeremy Treadwell (Cook Islands), Sarah Treadwell (Rangiatea), McKay (Ratana churches and the Ringatu house, Rongopai, New Zealand), Ellis (East Coast and Northland meeting houses, New Zealand), Andersen (a meeting house near Wellington), McCarthy (Captain Hankey’s carved residence near Dunedin, New Zealand), Jeanette Budgett (southern Cook Islands), and Deidre Brown (Ratana churches, some Northland houses). Many of these researchers are primarily interested in the representation of Maori architecture and have moved on from field research to theoretical issues as demonstrated in their more recent SAHANZ papers.30

Australian researchers who have employed fieldwork and carried out empirical research include Memmott (numerous Australian regions), Long (upper Georgina River basin, Queensland), Fantin (Arnhem Land, Northern Territory), O’Rourke (Tully and Murray River region, north-east Australian rainforest), Davidson (Maya indigenous groups in southern Mexico and Guatemala), Go-Sam (Herbert and Wild Rivers, north-east Australian rainforest), O’Brien (Murray Island, Torres Straits) and Fowler (Papua New Guinea, especially central southern coastal groups of Papua).


Figure 3: Salvage architectural ethnography of Maya traditions by James Davidson includes this Kaqchikel House from the community of Los Encuentros in the state of Solola in the western highlands of Guatemala, 2002. Photo by James Davidson.

85

Three notable examples of salvage architectural ethnography are Davidson’s documentationoftraditionalMayahousearchitecturesinGuatemalaandMexico (Fig 3), O’Rourke’s work on North-east Australian Aboriginal rainforest domeconstructions(caneandsaplingframeswithpalmleafandbladygrasscladding) (Fig 4), and the New Zealand documentation of Maori bundled reed wall construction by Rao Hoskins and Carin Wilson (reported by Brown).31Davidson’s work is the first of its kind to fully document the last vestiges of traditional thatch architectures of the Maya, while O’Rourke and Hoskins and Wilson employed interviews with knowledgeable elders and applied the knowledge to simulated architectural reconstructions that were filmed in the field. Another example of historical-based salvage ethnography is Austin’s overview of the sixteenth century architecture of Rapa Nui, dating from when socio-economic conditions were flourishing prior to the period of ecological and cultural crisis from the 1600s to the 1800s.32 He examined the relation of the famed 900 statues (moai) of ancestral entities to the raised stone platform courts in which ritual events occurred. An outstanding methodological contribution on salvage ethnography is Brown’s paper “He Hokonga Whare e Kimihia: Seeking the Corner of the House,” which examines the problems of reconstructing the stylistic profile of early contact northern Maori building traditions based on the slim evidence of twenty museum-held timber architectural fragments, poorly and erroneously documented texts, photos and post holes identified by archaeologists.33

TheSAHANZindigenous-researchscholarsdrawonthecognatedisciplinesof mainstream architectural history, national and regional histories, political history, art history, fine arts, anthropology, archaeology and cultural studies. Increasingly, researchers combine a range of disciplinary techniques that rely on the “triangulation” of results, rather than being perturbed by criticism that different source data may be incompatible for analysis.34Onetechnical

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

Figure 4: Documentation of Australian rainforest architecture by Tim O’Rourke includes this

double-dome structure constructed by Jirrbal and Gulngay consultants near Tully River, 2004,

with fan palm cladding and lawyer cane ties. Photography by Timothy O’Rourke.

86

topic under debate is the proper method for reconciling indigenous narrative analysis with written dated archival sources.35EllisseeksanintegrityofMaoriarchitecturalhistoryresearchthroughdrawingonabalancedcombinationoforal sources, written records, visual ethnographic records and carved treasures found in archaeological and other sites.36Herrangeoforalsourcesincludeshuman histories, “celestial knowledge” (sacred histories), genealogies, song types (including lullabies, laments, love songs), dance, proverbs, tribal sayings and place names.37 Ellis goes further, outlining a framework of specific ethical guidelinesfortribalarchitecturalhistoryresearchwhichdealswithintellectualand cultural property issues as well as the inter-relational issues of “voice”, audience and tribal consultants’ roles.38

EmpiricalhistoricalresearchonMaoriarchitectureanditspost-contactcolonialtransformationsisoneofthestrengthsoftheNewZealandcontribution


Figure 5: A comparison of scale of Gothic Cathedrals with Papua New Guinea Men’s Houses by Martin Fowler (2004). Courtesy Martin Fowler.

87

to SAHANZ. An outstanding example of this work is Brown’s reconstruction of the traditional early nineteenth century whare raupo, or thatched and woven Maori house, with its bulrush cladding, and bundled reed interior wall linings (Fig 1).39OtherimportantempiricalcontributionsareLong’saccountofthetrans-generational persistence of externally-oriented, hearth-centred domiciliary and camping practices of Aboriginal people on the upper Georgina River in north-west Queensland, and Fowler’s analyses of the complex political and culturalfactorsunderlyingthewidespreadandthoroughdestructionofthespectacular men’s houses (ravi, eravo) of southern Papua in the mid twentieth century (Fig 5).40

WhilsttheempiricalfocushasbeenmaintainedinmanySAHANZpaperson indigenous themes after the mid-1990s, an increasing preoccupation with theoretical issues became especially prevalent in the 1999, 2000 and 2002 conferences. The only attempt to categorise theoretical topics in the indigenous SAHANZ literature was made by Memmott in 2002, and we re-visit here some of these themes. The majority of SAHANZ papers on indigenous and bi-cultural topics can be sorted into two broad categories. The first relates to the politicisation of definitions of “architecture” and its fit to indigenous architectural traditions. This leads to a perception of inbuilt bias lying at the heartofwhetherornotthemainstreamEuro-Americanacademiaacceptthearchitectures of “others”. The second is the representation of “indigeneity” (indigenous identity) in and through architecture, which can be also seen as the contestationofthearchitecturalterrainwhereinpeopleofdifferentculturesmeet, react with, and interact with one another. The following brief overview of these themes will naturally reveal many links and overlaps.

The Formulation and Politicisation of Alternate Definitions of ArchitectureBased on their understanding of Aboriginal architecture, the first SAHANZ paper to open a debate on the politics of defining “architecture” was presented by Memmott and Go-Sam in 1999. Memmott has since refined this as:

Architecture is a selected, arranged and constructed configuration of

environmental properties, both natural and artificial, in and around one or

more activity spaces or behavioural settings, all within a cultural landscape, and

combined with patterns of behavioural rules and meanings as well as incorporating

cultural constructs of space and time, to result in human comfort and quality of

lifestyle.41

In this cross-cultural view of architecture, the fundamental elements of residential design can thus be defined as domiciliary spaces, with subspaces for particular activities and hearths, and optional shelters – all within preferred site characteristics. The “architecture” is initially defined by the selection of the site and then by distinct spatial and cognitive rules and behaviours articulated

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON


Table 3: Themes in the SAHANZ Literature Concerning the Representation of Indigeneity in Architecture and Place

1. ENCODING MEANINGS INTO ARCHITECTURE AND PLACE

− Bi-cultural significance of specific building designs – embedded symbols ofindigeneity.

− Shifts in the meaning and status of buildings as a result of directed and non-directed cultural change.

− Meanings of Indigenous places and cultural landscapes.

− Sedentary versus mobile use of place and the significance of meaning for design.

− Adaption of western housing to express indigenous lifestyles.

− Meanings of semi-sedentary Aboriginal shelters and villages as well as theirapplication to cultural tourism.

2. RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND VALUES AS SEMANTIC GENERATORS OFARCHITECTURE

− Ethno-architecture and associated religious meanings.

− Mission architecture and its bi-cultural architectural properties.

− Appropriation of European religious architecture by Indigenous groups andacculturation into their indigeneity.

3. CULTURAL CHANGE PROCESSES IN ARCHITECTURE

− Biculturalism and bi-cultural architecture – varying constructs.

− Cycles of cultural exchange (including ‘double movements’) between two or moregroups.

− Cultural stereotyping and simplification of indigenous architecture.

− Bi-directional change: dual design agency and interpretation of particularbuildings by colonial and indigenous groups respectively.

4. INTERPRETATION OF CHANGING ARCHITECTURAL TRADITION

− Alternate constructs of tradition: static versus dynamic.

− Cultural renaissances: re-invention of tradition and its functions.

5. INDIGENEITY OF METROPOLITAN SETTINGS

− Modes of juxtaposition and maintenance of tradition in metro settings.

− The symbolic role of indigenous architecture in political contestations for rights inmetro settings.

− Re-construction of tradition for indigenous tourism.

− Encoding pan-tribal symbolism into buildings of national significance.

89

within that site. The introduction of structure and buildings is dictated by these rules and behaviours, and represents a material extension in response to climatic and social factors. Cultural symbols and meanings encoded in physical form may provide yet another overlay of architectural properties. The architecture is thus supportive of domiciliary lifestyle, social organisation and associated human needs, resulting in a cultural “fit” or congruency between behaviour and environment.42

In 2001, Mike Austin defined Pacific Island architecture as

open to the sky rather than closed rooms, of sticks and grass as against mud and

stones, poles as against walls, of single cell pavilions rather than labyrinthine

complexes, of buildings raised in the air on stilts rather than sunk in the ground,

of temporariness as against permanence, tension and weaving rather than

compression and building, an outdoor existence and ocean voyaging as against a

life grounded in the land.43

Later, Austin described Pacific architecture as being obsessed with the tectonic and the ornamental potential of joints.44Anethnographicbasisforthetectonicaspect is to be found in Brown’s paper “Clothed not Clad,” which aims to redress the imbalanced preoccupation with Maori carving and painting arts and technologies in the fine arts and ethnographic literature.

In developing five primary architectural types, Fowler modelled what constitutes Melanesian Traditional Architecture in Papua New Guinea, with each type based on distinct concepts of form-making and tectonic technique, and the potential for spawning many sub-types and variations generated through expressive or decorative elaboration.45Fowler’stypologyisbasedonthe idea of tectonic languages (weaving and binding) and syntactic (form/space) vocabularies. His premise is that preoccupation with weaving and binding stands out in the artistic production of everyday items such as wrist bands, bag, mats and so forth, of almost all Melanesian societies. The character of a number of the genotypic roof forms can be defined as woven three-dimensional basketlike frames, although Fowler notes that one is closer to South-East Asian structural traditions.

These definitions of indigenous architecture draw on or reference cultural constructs of space and time, which are the subject of a number of the SAHANZ papers. Andersen discounts certain architectural theorists and historians (e.g. Fletcher, Alan Colquhoun) as having separated “modern” society from the so-called “primitive” world, the latter fictionalised as existing in a vacuum of timelessness. She notes that the crude colonial assumption of primitive cultures being grounded in timelessness ‘stood as an obstacle for Maori architecture for some time.’46 Indigenous traditions were thus reified, stifling any understanding of ever-present cultural change processes, and intimidating any evolving

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

90

conceptualisation, so valued in Euro-American architectural discourse, in the realm of indigenous environments.

Thisfailuretoincorporatecross-culturalconstructsoftimeandspaceintoanunderstanding of architecture has been discussed by a number of authors. For example, Bill McKay writes:

theMaorispaceandtimeconstructcanbethoughtofmorelikeaconstellationwith

the past and the people of the past always felt in the present, like the constellations

of the sky – enmeshing, surrounding – always before you, always behind, forming

patterns that can be interpreted in various ways.47

In considering the life-cycle of Maori meeting houses (aging, decaying, rebuilding and adaption), McKay notes that Maori re-building cements social relations and ensures the transfer of skills with an invariable change of form. He explains this as a process of cultural revitalisation and positions modern Euro-American architectural notions of permanence and durability against the mutable, flexible, adaptive nature of Pacific building. Central to McKay’s argument is the acknowledgement of how time, memory, embodiment and ornament, rather than form and structure, order Maori architecture. McKay and Walmsley position this building cycle within inter-generational “building time”; they describe the process as reflecting Maori concepts of cyclical or “resonant” time.48

Austinsuggeststhatbuildingscanlookbothtothepastandtothefutureinadouble temporal-architectural process, and interprets the Maori meeting house as drawing on dynamic notions of tradition while representing a vision of hope for a stable future.49ThisconformstotheMaoriconceptofcyclictimeinwhich‘events of the past determine those of the future’.50 In this regard, both Fantin (on Aboriginal architecture) and McKay (on Maori) speak of the seasonal and cyclical uses of different dwellings and alternate residential sites.51

Andersen uses the Maori model of whakapapa, the tracing of genealogical lineageandthepositioningofonesselfintolayersofatemporalandgenerationalcontinuum, to examine changing Maori architectural tradition. She contends that from ‘the mid 19th Century onwards, European arrival in New Zealand can beseenasacatalystforatransformationinMaoribuildinguseandsettlementpatterns.’52AndersenanalysesthearchitecturallineageoftheMaorisettlementofPukekaraka as ‘an evolving built environment, where new parts draw inspiration from the past, yet never stagnate’.53

Wood’s 2000 paper “The Maori Land Occupation Structures of Waikaremoana, New Zealand” presents a contemporary example of the manipulation of the definition of architecture by New Zealand’s mainstream politicians to legitimate the removal of temporary structures built by the Tuhoe tribeduringtheiroccupationoflandintheUreweraNationalParkontheshoresof Lake Waikaremoana. Wood compares the Tuhoe structures with the Pakeha founding myth of “Man Alone” to show Man Alone as a resourceful pioneer


91

who is able to build himself a small dwelling (a bach) in the face of enormous obstacles, taming the New Zealand landscape.54 In contrast, structures of a similarscalethataredeemedtobeillegitimatelyoccupyingthelandscapewerelegitimately removed.

OnecommonarchitecturalmythisbasedontheracistpremisethatWestern

versions of the built environment are necessarily ‘advanced’ formal expressions,

while that of so called ‘native peoples’ is merely primitive, indeed not architecture

at all. This (Western) preconception points not only to difficulties of reconciling

cultural difference, but also brings into question the wider cultural assumptions that

shape the institutional structure of architecture itself.55

Representation of Indigeneity, In and Through ArchitectureThefollowingdiscussionisbrokenintoanumberofsub-themesthatfallunderthe banner of the representation of indigeneity, in and through architecture. The way in which the architectures of indigenous peoples reflect their specific cultural milieus is multiform, and relates to: the encoding of meanings into architecture and place; religious beliefs and values as generators of architecture; cultural change processes in architecture; interpretation of changing architectural traditions; and the indigeneity of metropolitan settings. These themes are not exhaustive but have been purposefully selected as broad categories under which themajorityofpapersandarticleswrittenfortheSAHANZcommunitycanbeplaced.

1. Encoding Meanings into Architecture and Place

AnumberofpaperswrittenforSAHANZconferencesandFabricationsareconcernedwiththeencodingofindigenousmeaningsintocontemporaryarchitectural and planning designs, their juxtaposition and contrast with non-indigenous meanings and the subsequent bicultural (or multicultural) significance of such statements. An architectural icon that receives recurring attention in this regard is Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand (Wellington, JASMAX, finished 1998).56Anumberofpaperstreatthetopicofclarity versus ambiguity in the cultural meaning of symbols embedded symbols in the museum’s architecture. Linzey, for example, addresses this topic by invoking philosophical theories of signs or metaphors that reference pan-Maori identity, like that of the fault-line wall. He approaches Te Papa with tools drawn from Greek Stoicism, Plato and C. S. Peirce’s theory of signs. (Memmott has elsewhere drawn on Peirce’s theory of signs for analyzing Aboriginal meanings in environmental constructs.57)

Curiously, there are no contributions to SAHANZ publications on other recentnationalarchitecturaliconsdesignedandbuiltintheregiondespitetheirstrong indigenous references, specifically the National Museum of Australia in

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

92

Canberra with its precinct sibling building, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (Ashton Raggatt McDougall, finished 2001), or the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Culture Centre in New Caledonia (Renzo Piano Building Workshop, finished 1998).58Onechallengeforthedesignerofnationalindigenous icon buildings is to find readily communicable architectural signs of pan-tribal significance that transcend those local and regional meanings that might be interpreted as privileging one group.59AproblemthatalsosurfacesinBrown’sanalysisofMaorieducationarchitectureishowtoappropriatelydesignMaori Studies centres in tertiary educational institutions (and even to name such complexes) for Maori students from multi-tribal backgrounds, given the lack of precedence in cross-iwi kaupapa (tribal protocols) or tikanga (customs) that are normally firmly embedded in local group traditions, identities and symbols.60Sheasks: should or can any one tribe’s protocols be observed?

ThemeaningofindigenousplacesisarecurringthemeinSAHANZpapersonAboriginal Australian themes. Ursula de Jong’s 2006 paper “Contested Terrain: Point Nepean Victoria” discusses the difference between Aboriginal and white-Australian place values.61 Through a discussion of meanings, stories and memories in landscape, De Jong’s account analyses a land tenure dispute in the Point Nepean National Park in Victoria between the dominant mainstream Australian government and the traditional owners. De Jong argues for a holistic approach to landscape, place and country in uncovering, decoding and understanding the conflicting respective meanings of natural heritage and cultural heritage. In underscoring the importance of Aboriginal place values, de Jong uses a description by Deborah Bird Rose to explain that place ‘requires you to be intercultural, inter-temporal, open-minded to the imperatives of the lives that are lived.’ She continues:


Figure 6: The vaulted platform dwelling of Arnhem Land (northern Australia) provides a symbolic vehicle for Aboriginal sacred history. Photography by Nicolas Peterson.

93

From an Aboriginal perspective, Rose explains the Australian continent is

crisscrossed with the tracks of the Dreamings: waking, slithering, crawling, flying,

chasing, hunting, weeping, dying, giving birth … making relationships … The

multi faceted relationships are holistic … [I]n the context of nourishing terrains

… holistic systems are open to accommodation of that which is new … Aboriginal

systemsofphilosophyandecologyaccommodatethenewaccordingtothelogicof

the country.62

In her essay “Remote Control,” Angelique Edmonds also discusses the gulf of ideological difference existing between Aboriginal people and the Australian Federal Government in the provision of housing and settlement planning in the community of Ngukurr in northeast Arnhem Land.63Shewrites:

Aboriginal people and the conditions of country in the Ngukurr region still favour

a mobile lifestyle, yet the provision of services assumes that populations will be

sedentary … [All of the technological infrastructure] sourced outside of Ngukurr,

indicate that the style of living permanently in that particular location has long

since ceased to be a response to the [local] place; to the conditions present and the

constraints and opportunities that place offers.64

By way of contrast, Long’s 2002 paper examines the retention of Aboriginal place properties in a north-west Queensland setting despite a degree of urbanisation.65 Long studies a remote, riverine Aboriginal people who continue to move between temporarily established bush camps and conventional Anglo-Australian housing in a rural township, transformed and adapted to suit customary aspects of lifestyle. These two contexts respectively demonstrate the postcolonial continuity and adaptation of customary “architectural” practices in traditional places, and the simultaneous use of urban Western houses with special yard “attachments” to facilitate customary outdoor behaviour patterns.

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

Figure 7: A contemporary application of sacred symbolism in

an Aboriginal house designed for a Galawin’ku client in 2001 who

requested the verandah detail to symbolise the forked post and ridge

pole associated with a Galpu Fish Trap ancestral history.

Photography by architect Richard Layton.

94

O’Rourke’s contribution is more purely ethnographic, and his findings on the semi-sedentary villages of Aboriginal rainforest camps will contribute to the revision of Australian architectural stereotypes.66 There is much more variation in the extent of sedentary settlement versus residential mobility than was formerly portrayed in earlier ethnographic glosses of Aboriginal Australia, which held that the continent was peopled exclusively with hunter-gatherer nomads. A national overview of Aboriginal architecture by Memmott strongly hypothesises that semi-sedentary villages were formed in places where abundant seasonal staples were available. This was particularly so if there was also inclement weather that necessitateddurableweatherproofresidencesandaneedforprotectedindoorenvironments in which one could stand up and move between inner-connected spaces with minimal discomfort.67O’Rourke’sworkisalsointerestingasitmaybeappliedtothediscussionsurroundingculturaltourismthroughthereconstructionof one or more sedentary villages at customary campsites on rainforest walking paths. A number of these paths are currently being reconstructed by National Parks in collaboration with Traditional Owners.

In the context of SAHANZ, and painting with broad strokes, Australian authors appear to have been preoccupied with contextualising architecture within the surrounding properties of place, while New Zealanders seem to have focused more on the encoding of meanings into buildings.

2. Religious Beliefs and Values as Generators of Architecture

Religion has been a potent generator of architecture in western cultures, and we find from the SAHANZ contributions that it similarly pervades indigenous architectures. In Aboriginal Australia, religious knowledge and practice was, and within many groups continues to be, one of the more complex dimensions ofculturethatwasintegratedwithboththesecularandprofanedimensionsofeveryday life. The system of religious knowledge evolved to explain and even direct or influence environmental changes and transformations. Belief systems involve a configuration of human environmental elements that are believed to be interconnected in a variety of ways, often through systems of environmental signs and indices, as well as through a spatio-temporal model of the universe and notions of visible and invisible phenomena. In addition the model carries with it codes of behaviour or “laws”, determining norms of social and territorial behaviour. Identity is defined within a cognitive domain of place-specific knowledge and invisible properties of place.

Fantin’s 2002 paper gives an overview of the relation between religion and architecture for the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land in northern Australia.68SheconsidersthesacredhistoryoftheancestralWagilagsistersoftheDreamtimeinwhich structural elements of the house (forked post and ridge pole) were imbued with religious significance providing a constant reminder of ones cosmological


95

position in the Yolngu universe (Fig 6). Fantin examines the creation of Yolngu religious architecture through ceremony as a creative synthesis of song, dance, performance, painting, ground sculptures, ceremonial artefacts, poles, and shelters, which become imbued with ancestral power, thus constituting a temporary religious architecture which contains “ancestral aesthetic” qualities. ShepresentstheideaoftheceremonialEldersasarchitectscreatingaformofreligiousarchitecture:

Preparing the ground for ceremonies, creating the appropriate structures to be

used in them, and enacting the song and dance in them is a highly ordered process

which is controlled and directed by particular Yolngu elders; they are the architects

of the ceremony. The processes required to organise, prepare and build ceremony

grounds, and then invoke an ancestor’s presence and power through song and

dance creates a Yolngu religious architecture.69

Fantin argues that any construct of Yolngu architecture would need to incorporateanunderstandingoftherelationshipbetweenthestructureofYolngu cosmology and human social identity. Elsewhere she has written:

thatinparticularIndigenousregionssuchasArnhemLandcontemporary

Indigenous people continue to interweave their ethnoarchitectural, spatio-

behavioural and religious traditions with Western architectural components in

their commentaries and that this is slowly evolving into a truly modern Aboriginal

Architecture, one which will provide a substantial contribution to the future

Australian identity and global cultural heritage.70

Many of the New Zealand SAHANZ scholars have examined the architectural consequences of early contact between European missionaries and Maori and other Polynesian peoples.71AndersenwritesontheappropriationofCatholicconceptslearnedfromFrenchMaristmissionariesintoMaoriarchitectureatthesettlement of Pukekaraka. She describes the meeting house of Hino:

Hine Nui o Te Ao Katoa was built in 1905. The name incorporates references to

both Hine-nui-te-po, the first woman in Maori mythology, and Mary, mother

of Jesus. Various meanings are given to the name of this whare [house]. The

translation given by Archdiocese publication on the site is ‘Mary, Great Woman

of the Whole World, Woman of Light’. They also state that the reason the whare

is uncarved and undecorated is because it is dedicated to an ancestor common to

both Maori and Pakeha [Anglo New Zealand]. Although uncarved on the exterior,

Hine fits the general plan of a traditional whare, except it has a centrally placed

door with windows on either side…Hine [is] described as the result of ‘partnership

between the Maori and the European Peoples’.72

Following Brown’s work, Andersen categorises her Maori examples as forms of counter-colonisation.

All of the forms of appropriation used by these [Maori] leaders can be seen

as movements towards meeting the new and changing needs of a people, and

adapting new concepts to fit into an authentic Maori world. The strong adaptability

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

96

shown through the appropriation of colonial architectural forms, and resistance to

pure assimilation shows the Maori as highly progressive, which has until recently

been taken for granted by scholars.73

Thesetypesofcasestudiesdealingwithreligiousarchitectureintroducethetheme of cultural change processes, which pervade many of the New Zealand papers and contribute significantly to post-colonial knowledge of architecture.

3. Cultural Change Processes in Architecture

Within the study of cultural change, anthropologists have identified a range of types of change processes, although this field of study is by no means coherent or unified, and much integration of the theory remains to be done. Many SAHANZpapersconcernedwithindigenousorbiculturalthemesaddressprocesses of syncretism, and contribute to an understanding of cross-cultural architectural exchanges, “borrowings” and appropriations, which result in transformations of architectural meanings and built configurations.74Authorshave been preoccupied with biculturalism and bicultural architecture. For example, the 2002 papers of Fantin and McKay both employ the term “bicultural architecture” as a syncretisation of customary and western elements. Elsewhere Linzey defined “biculturalism” as the phenomenon of two cultures co-occupying one place.75 Also in 2002 Austin addressed the concept of “hybrid architecture”.76Bicultural architecture might appear to make sense as a label in a relatively simple political context of two-way non-directed change between two groups wherebybothgroupsacceptandacculturatesomethingoftheother’sculturaltradition as products. Good-quality empirical studies, however, powerfully illustrate that such exchanges are often more complex processes that may challenge the theoretical usefulness of the term “bicultural”. We shall return to this point in due course.

Again at the 2002 Brisbane conference, Refiti writes on the appropriation of theEuropeanChristianchurchasanarchitectureandaliturgybySamoansinthe nineteenth century.77 This was accomplished within a Polynesian worldview with neither a comprehensive understanding of Christian culture nor an attempt to authentically create a facsimile Christian religion; Christian ideas were adapted selectively and integrated with local customs as these churches became local idealised versions of Christian spirituality. Refiti then analyses the transposition of that construction form to the contemporary urban context of NewZealandbyanon-indigenousNewZealandarchitectwhoattemptedtouseit to reflect a Pacific identity. What might be finally read as ‘Pacific architecture, is a New Zealand European architect’s fantasy of what a Pacific heavenly paradise might be, based on a Pacific fantasy on what a European missionary paradise might be.’ Refiti describes the overall process of transformation of architectural properties as ‘a double movement of cross-cultural exchanges’.78



McKay also writes on appropriation, but in this case by colonists of selected indigenous architectural stereotypes. He examines the stereotyping of Maori architecture by Anglo-New Zealanders through the media of politics, museums and texts into a single genotype, that of the whare. Any post-contact architecturalacculturationinMaoriarchitecturewasseenbycoloniststorepresent a loss of indigenous identity and to be somehow inauthentic. He asserts:

This paper discusses the perception of ‘Maori architecture’ as it has been seen in

the mainstream narrative of New Zealand architectural history. It offers a critical

overview of buildings by Maori from the perspective of their portrayal in New

Zealand architectural histories. It is not so much about the buildings themselves,

but rather the processes of selection and representation and how this has reflected

the political and cultural concerns of the times.79

McKay provides architectural examples of the mixing of Pakeha and Maori motifsbyMaoribuilder-architectsasadistinctlyNewZealandformofbiculturalexpression, and certainly not as an outcome of assimilation. Brown extends McKay’s analysis by projecting forwards from the era of western museum-controlleddepictionsandstereotypesofMaorimeetinghousestocontemporarydepictionsandconstructionsofthesamebuildingcompletedbytertiary-trainedMaori artists and curators.80 The latter examples are for art gallery settings where artists and curators are empowered to express Maori cultural values on their own terms. Brown also mentions the relatively recent repatriation of a meeting house to a Maori group from whom it was originally commissioned, onceagaindemonstratingacycleofthetransformationanddissemination

Figures 8 & 9 (detail): Maori Battalion War Memorial Community Centre, Palmerston North, New Zealand, by John Scott opened 1964. Photographs by John Macarthur, 2005. Reproduced with permission.

98

of an architectural construct between two groups. The combination of these three papers from the 2002 conference provides an insightful overview of the transformation of architectural constructs over several hundred years within a Polynesian context of colonial encounter.

McKay’s analysis of two buildings by architect John Scott, dating from the 1960s, offers further consideration of the concept of architectural biculturalism.81 He starts by defining “integration” as the incorporation of oneculturalgroupintothedominantmonoculturewithnoreciprocalshifttorecognise the former group’s cultural position. This process corresponds to the more commonly employed term “assimilation”. By contrast, he employs “bicultural” as a sharing or blending of two cultures on more or less equal terms whereby two sets of elements are fused together, but both remain overtly recognisable.

In “Half-Caste or Bicultural?” McKay comments on a famous example of this balance: the Futuna Chapel in Wellington was completed in 1961 and designed by Scott, of Maori and Pakeha descent. It is arguably the best successful example of bicultural New Zealand architecture. This Chapel was designed for a retreat centre for Catholic men and women, a complex that included facilities for worship, reflection, counselling, dining and sleeping. Scott drew on the analogy of the Maori marae courtyard, designing the chapel as the equivalent of the meeting house within the marae.82 Although antecedents and stylistic influences can be seen in European ecclesiological architecture, Scott drew on the New Zealand vernacular timber traditions of barn and woolshed, and on his own Maori traditions. The Chapel integrated the Polynesian model of symbolising the building as a person with Catholic traditions through at least three techniques: (a) the altar has an inset of a bone fragment of the first Pacific martyr, St. Pierre Chanel, emphasising its sacrificial nature; (b) the porch in Maori mythology ‘carries human dimensions of homage and reception’, signifying the human welcome, and marking the transition from the marae to the meeting house, from body to soul; and (c) the central post represents the soul of the person, also symbolism drawn from Maori mythology.

In this same paper, however, McKay points to a second possible outcome of dual cultural influences, which he labels “half-caste”, whereby there is an uncomfortablesharingofculturalelementswithanarchitecturalresultthatbelongs to neither one nor the other, that lacks a coherence from either cultural perspective, and which may even undermine or debase the donor cultures. He uses Scott’s Maori Battalion Memorial Building in Palmerston North (1964) to illustrate this outcome and goes so far as to hint (following Wood) that Te Papa may also fall into this category in its attempt to represent bicultural nationalism.

Treadwell’s 1991 analysis of Rangiatea demonstrates a similar outcome. The churchhasbeensubjecttotwodistinctculturalreadings:asachurchadapted


99

for Maori, and as a Maori meeting house adapted as a church. Its construction was fraught with a struggle for control over design between church officials and Maori craftsmen-builders. For example, Maori carving style predominated during the Archdeacon’s absence, but upon his return to the building site its application was restrained due to its un-Christian themes; and when the Maori workers shaped a 26-metre-long symbolic ridge pole (tahu) – which they nevertheless considered too short – a missionary arose in the middle of the night to saw three metres off it! Treadwell also makes it clear that the respective interpretations depend as much on cultural contextualisation as they do on highlighting particular architectural elements or decorative features. She concludes that as a meeting house Rangiatea lacks a porch, and as a church it lacks a chancel; it ‘lacks the forms considered to be essential to [either of] the [two] models’.The end result was that Maori architecture became concentrated within, whilst the architecture of the colonisers was imposed on the exterior, to make the building ‘safe and consumable’ in keeping with the early colonial policy of containment and assimilation.83 The architectural result was an example of bicultural ambiguity and tension rather than of harmonious integration.

Whatmightseemafairlysimpleproceduralanalysisofhowmissionariesimposed and adapted British church designs for Pacific Island communities in an assimilative approach may take on added bicultural complexity if sufficient contextual data can be collected and assembled for analysis. At the 1998 SAHANZ conference, Treadwell presented a paper on the architecture imposed bymid-nineteenthcenturyEnglishmissionariesinthreeofthesouthernCookIslands. The buildings were constructed of timber with wattle and mud plastered walls and coated with whitewash (manufactured from coral lime) to symbolise a range of Christian attributes centring on purity, chastity, and virtuousness. Traditional woven architectures were displaced, as was carving, and symbols of perceived paganism such as the marae podia. This colonial imposition could be interpretedasdirectedculturalchangewiththeadaptationofEnglishchapelarchitecture using locally sourced materials.

However, in 2005, Budgett presented another paper on church building in the southern Cook Islands with a focus on one of these three islands (Mangaia), which provides a more complex picture of cultural change processes and the transformation of architectural traditions.84Shecommenceswithaninvestigation of the anthropological literature on Mangaian social and territorial organisation, explaining a dual distribution of power with, on the one hand, a relatively stable power base of spiritual rulers founded on hereditary right succession and, on the other, territorial chiefs whose estates were less stable, being transformed in size by periodic warring followed by peace rituals. The initial acceptance of, or resistance to mission-promoted change was dictated by whether particular chiefs wanted to freeze their existing ample territorial

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

100

estates under a new and more stable colonial governance system, or whether those chiefs with insufficient land wanted to repel any incoming colonial power structure that was threatening to stabilise the current status quo, prior to their having had opportunity to reclaim their lands. Budgett then goes on to argue thatitwasaparticularsegmentoftheMangaianwhoincorporatedthecultureof the colonisers and that embraced a more bi-directional (or bicultural) process of change. She shows that Mangaian social structure was incorporated into the churchthroughthespatialallocationofsub-groupstointernalsittingspacesand external yard areas, i.e. through sociospatial behaviour. The church was ‘reinscribed to reconstruct Mangaian identity within the whole’.85ReferencestoMangaian sacred cosmogony (origin myths) were also incorporated in symbolic ways, such as in the decorative sennit (cordage) binding with their lozenge designs, which seem to derive from Mangaian carving and tapa cloth.

The following year (2006), Budgett again presented research on Cook Island architecture with a critique of western approaches to heritage conservation methods arising from the recent renovations of the Oneroa Sunday School on Mangaia Island, one of the last remaining coral-stone, gabled, mission buildings dating from the pre-colonial era (1879) that incorporated both European and indigenous architectural detailing.86HerpapertranscendstheNewZealandtendencytofocusonbiculturalarchitecturalelementsbyre-analysingtheroleofthearchitectureintheculturallandscapeandthecontemporaryglobalsociety in order to explain why a Cook Islander Church Council chose to replace the 125-year-old, post-supported, carved, sennit-lashed, timber roof-framing with a clear-span, steel frame carrying a horizontal ceiling. Budget employs a range of cultural change hypotheses to explain why the client group rejected an orthodox western architectural conservation attempt to retain the indigenous decoration. She draws upon McKay’s understanding of the cultural significance of periodically re-building the Maori meeting house, where the activation of socialrolesandnetworksandthetransmissionofskillsandknowledgeformkey elements in this dynamic maintenance of tradition, in which the building form invariably changes. In the case of the Sunday School, the social network was activated globally as ex-patriots were recruited to donate the building funds, such ‘that building [became] a privileged activity acting to bind the wider communityintosocialrelationsandhierarchieswellbeyondthegeographyofthe islands’ in an agenda to build “new” and “modern” in an “unfolding” society (‘cyclical notions of history and time’) but within a more stable and wider context of an island cultural landscape of ringed, cosmologically significant sites.87 Budgett continues to review the challenging implications for cultural tourism and architectural conservation policies when the active role of the subject (building user/creator) dominates the value of the object (heritage item) in the dynamic re-interpretation of tradition.


101

The work presented in Budgett’s papers is generally reflective of a number of the themes pervading SAHANZ publications on indigenous and bicultural topics.

4. Interpretation of Changing Architectural Traditions In considering the nature of cultural change, a number of scholars have used SAHANZ as a venue in which to examine the construct of “tradition”. An examination of the anthropological literature on tradition reveals two competing theoretical paradigms for tradition as a scientific construct. In the first paradigm one sees a tradition naturalistically, as a bounded entity made up of constituent parts that themselves have defined properties. In this atomistic paradigm, culture and its constituents are regarded as entities having an essence apart from any interpretation of them. Anthropologists may prescribe, for example, which traits are old, which are new innovations, and show how such traits fit together to make up the abstract concepts that we call a “tradition” and a “culture”.88

An increasingly preferable definition of tradition accepts that changes occur totraditionsparticularlywithintheprocessesofinter-generationaltransmissionand enculturation, in which ‘interpretations are made of the tradition presented’.89 The alternate paradigm, then, is of an interpretive process: any tradition is continually re-interpreted; unchanging traditional societies never existed.90 Since all cultures change constantly, there can only be what is new, although what is new can take on symbolic value as “traditional” in reference to what is perceived as being “old”.91 Our view is that both of these paradigms of “tradition” can usefully co-exist, and that our task in configuring a longitudinal theory of architectural stability and change is to explore both the attributes of cultural traits and to understand the interpretative styles and methods of cultural participants in their daily processes of creative cultural production, including architecture.92Recurringcommentontheseissuesisfoundinthe SAHANZ scholarship. For example Andersen (2002) emphasises that indigenous cultures are ‘dynamic societies, in a continual process of adaptation, choice, and constraint.’93Austinhascommentedonthedynamicnatureoftheconstruct of “architectural tradition” both in New Zealand and universally:

In Aotearoa/New Zealand tradition is continually being reinvented, and every

denial of tradition is a restatement of it while every representation of tradition is

a modification of it …. Modernism in constructing itself in opposition to its own

tradition referred to the primitive. However the primitive was the invoking of

another tradition …94

In analysing the nature of tradition in Maori architecture, the New Zealand contributorsmakeconstantreferencetothreeperiodsofarchitectural“Renaissance” in recent Maori history as part of a wider cultural rejuvenation: the development of the Maori meeting house in the period from 1850 to 1890; the Maori Arts and Crafts Movement of the 1920s and 1930s; and the collective

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

102

work of Maori architects in the 1970s and 1980s. All three of these periods yield comment on the dynamic nature of “tradition” whereby it is renewed or re-invented; however, the first two periods have been best interrogated and debated in SAHANZ literature.

In discussing tradition, the architectural focus of the New Zealand SAHANZ scholars has been the “marae” and the “meeting house”, two terms which are sometimes used synonymously but which in fact have distinctly different meanings while referring to elements of the same architectural complex. Austin adopts a definition of marae as the ‘courtyard in front of a house’, but notes a second meaning of this Maori word to be ‘generosity’ or ‘hospitality’.95Heinfersa common root meaning of ‘openness’, and argues that the marae is the making of openness via a horizontal platform that recreates the ocean’s horizontality for Pacific peoples.96AustindiscussestheuseofmaraemoregenerallythroughoutthedifferentPolynesiangroupsnotingthattheorientationofthemaraeisnotconsistent but dependent on local contextual landscape/seascape attributes (especially prevailing winds), and giving particular attention to the ahu (equivalent of marae) of Rapa Nui (or Easter Island), which are bounded by the moai or stone head sculptures.97 The Maori meeting house can be defined in relation to the marae, as McKay explains:

[It] is widely considered the primary architectural form of the Maori people and

their major artistic achievement. It is a structure that has evolved from earlier chiefs

housesduringEuropeansettlementofNewZealandandisacommunalbuildingset

on the marae (gathering place) for a hapu (part of the tribe) or whanau (extended

family group) to gather in. It is not a dwelling, but is used for meetings, discussions

and sleeping in by both the people of the marae and visitors during events. The

Meeting House has a long ridged roof, and consists of one large space entered

through a gabled porch. This internal space is often highly decorated with carvings,

painting and weaving, that usually represent ancestors.98

McKay puts forward the interesting case that the whare (commonly sited adjacent to the marae) was largely a nineteenth century invention and a product of contact with colonial immigrant society, despite its subsequent reification in museums as a traditional building type. He argues that meeting houses were a form of Maori modernism, ‘that they eschewed customary practice, and evolved new techniques and forms to face the challenge of a radically changing world.’99Austindescribesthis innovation, which occurred during a severe Maori population decline in the 1870s and 1880s following the New Zealand Wars (sometimes called the Maori Wars or the Land Wars), as ‘a most extraordinary architectural response’.100Brown grounds the “invention of the tradition” of the meeting house in more solid anthropological research with an assertion that it synthesised mission church, pioneer hall and chief’s house.101 Although this type has received substantial attention by SAHANZ scholars, it still lacks a detailed analysis of this origin.


103

Thesecondperiodofanalysisconcerningthere-interpretationoftraditionisbestaccessedthroughBrown’sanalysisoftheSchoolofMaoriArtsandCraftsat Rotorua.102 This was conceived and instigated as an architectural Renaissance from 1926 to 1937 by the Maori Member of Parliament (Labour) Sir Apirana Ngata, who helped revive traditional carving, painting and woven panelling for 40 commissioned public buildings, but within a complex set of conflicts and dilemmasconcerningthemaintenanceoftraditionalMaoriphilosophyandpolitics against the pressure for conformity with Government policies, and the adaptionofMaoritechnologiestoAngloNewZealandarchitecturalandbuildingpractices. Brown has further outlined the underlying anthropological debate in New Zealand on the “invention of tradition”, concluding that this theoretical approach facilitates architectural historians’ examination of the relation of building types to strong nationalist or popular culturist movements, as well as providing opportunities to analyse the dynamic attributes of the maintenance of tradition as a process.103Sheseesthisasanimportantdirectionforfuturearchitectural history research.

5. Indigeneity of Metropolitan Settings

Whilstpost-modernarchitecturehashaditsbiggestimpactinthelargermetropolises of Oceania (e.g. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland), itparallelsastruggletomaintainindigenousidentityanditsassociatedarchitectural. This theme has not escaped SAHANZ scholarship. Although AucklandisthelargestcityinPolynesiawithacityscapethatislargelyEuropean in origin, the Polynesian 20% of its 1.5 million inhabitants do not necessarilyutilisehousesandsuburbsasitswesternarchitectsandplannersenvisaged. Through an analysis of contemporary New Zealand cine films, Austin demonstratesthatPolynesiandomiciliarypracticesarelikelytobetransferredin metropolitan settings to, for examples, an externally oriented use of space, outdoor cooking practices, the use of certain external doors by specific people in particular household roles, and abandonment of buildings following the death of a householder.104 This is an exceptional paper in that few Australasian researchers are concerned with profiling indigenous people in metropolitan settings. An Australian correlate is the work of Kelly Greenop (of UQ’s AERC) who has been examining the “tribalisation” of urban space and place by Aboriginal people in Brisbane.105

At the 2006 SAHANZ conference in Fremantle, Glen Hill presented a paper entitled “Dreaming the Block: Three Decades of Architectural Imagining for Redfern’s Indigenous Community,” concerning the political history and indigeneityofaonehectareparceloflandclosetothecentralbusinessdistractof Australia’s most urban metropolitan centre, Sydney. “The Block”, as it is commonly called, is one of Australia’s most contested urban landscapes, being

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

104

anationalsymbolandmicrocosmofthestruggleforindigenousrightsinAustralia. Hill’s paper addresses the recent history of the Block from the early 1970s, when the local Aboriginal community first took formal ownership over thismediumdensityresidentialareafollowingthepoliticalmomentumofthe1967 referendum that recognized Aboriginal citizenship, as well as a change from a conservative to a liberal socialist government. The paper examines the role that architecture, in representing a vision of indigeneity, has played across three decades of political processes, as Aboriginal people have resisted takeovers by the dominant mainstream political forces vying for control over its highly valuable precinct. Hill’s paper presents the three major periods (called “Architectural Dreamings”) that represent ‘waves of self destruction and renewal’ accompanied by different social and architectural visions for the AboriginalpeopleoftheTheBlockinresponsetometropolitanpoliticsandthe struggle for cultural survival.

The three architectural visions for the Block thus evidence an unfolding from

an inward looking, cooperative image of Aboriginal communality, perhaps

reflective of the innocence and naïve optimism of the 1960s and 70s, to an

aggressively open and outward facing image of cosmopolitanism, reflecting

the commercial and political imperatives of the moment .… While this shift

parallels that occurring in wider society, it is the litany of contestations

– contestations within the Aboriginal community between community

members with different outlooks, beliefs, genders, family affiliations; personal

contestations with alcohol, drugs and crime; contestation with developers;

contestation with (at different times) all three tiers of government – that

has made the woes of Redfern Aboriginal community such a visible public

commodity.106

Returning to the New Zealand contributors, Austin’s “Pacific Building” examines indigenous tourism and the resultant re-construction of “tradition” throughahybridoftraditionalandinternationalarchitecturethatfacilitatesnew syntheses. He provides the example of Polynesian environments created in the post-war United States, albeit from a mixed number of sources, and their emergent behavioural cultures. Some of the results from the 1950s, which were exported back to Hawaii and Tahiti, have been subsequently identified in the United States as heritage architecture.

One of the relatively new building types to appear on the campuses of AustralianandNewZealandtertiaryeducationalinstitutionscampusesover the last 20 years is the Indigenous Studies Centre or Unit – in New Zealand, the Maori Studies Centre. Brown makes a valuable practice contribution in her review of some ten or so Nga Whare Matauronga Maori or Maori Studies buildings as a relatively new architectural type thatmustaddressbothindigenousandWesterneducationalphilosophiesin nurturing Maori students.107Sheoutlinesarangeofchallengingdesign


105

problems including the balance between academic and cultural space, and the planning of spaces to conform with Maori concepts of tapu (sacred, restricted, protected, prohibited) and noa (free from taboo). Unfortunately there is no correspondinganalysistodatebyanyAustralianresearcherdespiteasimilarnumberofAboriginalandTorresStraitIslanderStudiesCentresbeingrealised on Australian campuses. A further critical issue that Brown raises, based on user responses and Post Occupancy Evaluation,(POE) is that the development of these centres with a set of strong traditional identity symbols isappreciatedandutilisedmorebyruralandmoretraditionallyorientatedstudents rather than urban born and raised Maori who may have a greater sense of tribal and cultural alienation.108 This finding indicates the importance of fine-grained user response surveys in POEs of cross-cultural architecture.

*Over the last 25 years, SAHANZ researchers have departed from a Euro-Americo-centricpreoccupationwiththeregion’shistoriographytoembraceabroadening set of cross-cultural themes that move beyond commentary about the influences of indigenous groups on transported colonial architectural styles from the 1800s to more complex issues about the representation of indigenousculturalidentityincontemporaryarchitectureandtheprocessesof cultural change and transforming indigenous architectural traditions. Gradualinfusionintothedebateofscholarlycontributionsfromsuchdisciplines as architectural anthropology, cultural studies, colonial and post-colonial history, political history and fine arts has culminated in a sustained revisionism of what architecture is in the South Pacific area and how cross-cultural theory may serve the region’s architectural production in a socially and environmentally appropriate manner, reflecting the ongoing presence and cultural significance of first peoples.

These SAHANZ papers are specifically oriented toward scholars of Pacific Rim indigenous cultures and their building traditions, in order to progress the debate regarding the human values of these traditions and what they represent by way of contrast to western constructs of architecture. Ageneralsub-themerunningthroughthiscollectionofpapersishowonemight configure a theoretical framework of “architecture” that would serve asacross-culturaltoolforunderstandingthenatureofconstructedandcomposed environments used as human habitats across all cultural contexts. An extension of this question would be why the Euro-American concept of “architecture” has so far not achieved such a unifying position, at times excluding non-Euro-American and indigenous building traditions.

ParallellingtheshiftwithinSAHANZfromstrictlycanonicarchitecturalhistoriography to the inter-relation of history and architectural theory, the

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

106

Society’s discourse on indigenous culture and architecture is thus developing into a strong voice within the region’s architectural culture. The greatest body of indigenous architectural research over the last 25 years, however, has been delivered at SAHANZ conferences (some 74 papers), rather than in the more visible outlet of the Society’s journal, Fabrications (some 15 articles). Of these 15 articles (spread across 24 issues), Austin (4) and Linzey (2) were the most prolific indigenous-focused authors to publish in this high-ranking journal. ThesestatisticsillustratethatSAHANZisnotimmunetothewiderdebateinarchitectural research and teaching,regarding the acceptance and definition of “other” architectures. We contend that it would be fruitful to publish indigenous architecture related research on a more frequent basis in Fabrications to provoke debate on cross-cultural architectural values, theories and aesthetics and to promote the adoption of a clear post-colonial perspective on architectural historydiscourseinthewiderarchitecturalculturesofAustraliaandNewZealand (as well as in Europe and North America). Indeed, there is a wider need to reflect on how the political, social and aesthetic biases of the post-colonial societiesofourregioninformandprejudicethepoliticaleconomyofarchitectureand architectural publishing.

One of the most interesting observations arising from a reading and comparisonoftheindigenousliteraturepublishedbySAHANZisthedifferenceinideologicalpositionsbetweenNewZealandandAustralianarchitecturalscholars. We believe the historical cultural and social contexts in which these scholars have been working has heavily influenced the respective positions: New Zealander maintaining a focus on issues surrounding the concept of “bicultural architecture” through the vehicle of a narrow number of built archetypes; AustraliansfocussingonplaceandidentityrepresentationwhendiscussingAboriginal settings.

In looking at the historical context of New Zealand, Austin’s early work in the 1970s about Maori marae and meeting houses is heavily referenced by subsequent New Zealand authors. His work appears to have led the renaissance of “bicultural” architectural theory in New Zealand since the 1970s. A critical observation, from an Australian perspective, is whether or not the Treaty ofWaitangihasactuallyworkedforindigenousrepresentationsintheNewZealand architectural context, or against them. With the nature of architecture being to create public and private representations of collective human identities, questions arise as to whether or not the Treaty has indeed provided abalancedphilosophicalframeworkthathasbeenadoptedintoarchitectureas biculturalism in a modern era. Has biculturalism resulted in a maintenance of Maori culture and identity or has this concept led to a reification of Maori identity representation in New Zealand architecture? These questions remain for SAHANZ to debate.


107

ItappearsthatthePakehaacceptanceofMaoriarchitecturaltraditionswas due to the Maori having building and settlement systems that could be easily grasped in British terms. This sits in contrast to the Australian context where European invaders deemed Aboriginal territory Terra Nullius, devoid of observable land tenure as well as of building and settlement systems. The irony of this observation is that the Aboriginal occupation and the evolution of its cultural fit to the environment was some 60 millennia longer than that of Maori. Did the fact that Maori have an architectural tradition (alongside developed concepts of trade and exchange) more aligned with European traditions influence their decision to offer a treaty to the local Maori? Regardless of the answer, the different definitions of landed property and architectural context between Australia and New Zealand have informed separate national theoretical paths in architectural historiography.

Perhaps both can learn from each other. The value of the New Zealand perspective to the Australian context seems to be the more widespread acceptance of a definition of architecture that incorporates and is congruent with indigenous building traditions. Austin’s work has greatly assisted this, as have the active professional and academic participation of Maori architects since the 1960s. It has, however, only been with the recent publication of Memmott’sGunyah, Goondie and WurleythatanAustralianscholarhassystematically attempted to redress this theoretical imbalance. The conclusion to Memmott’s book briefly outlines the emergence of the first conventionally qualified Aboriginal architects in Australia from the mid 1990s (graduates include two SAHANZ authors, Go-Sam and O’Brien). Maori architects – like John Scott, Bill Royal and his son Perry Royal, Rewi Thompson and Rau Hoskins, not to mention their late nineteenth century predecessor, Te Kooti – a have made their impact in the New Zealand profession over a much longer time, and this is reflected in the SAHANZ scholarship. That the histories of scholarship of indigenous peoples experiencing colonisation are parallel and separable has likewise affected the historiography of the two cases, Australia and New Zealand, both inside SAHANZ and out.

Thus, from our reading of the SAHANZ literature it appears that the first proposition in both the Australian and New Zealand contexts has been whether or not to accept (as in mainstream New Zealand), or to resist (more the case in mainstream Australia), a definition of architecture that encompasses indigenous building traditions. If accepted, the second step, which is heavily addressed in the New Zealand SAHANZ literature, is the representation of indigeneity in architecture. While New Zealand historians and theorists work with a framework of biculturality, Australian authors work with identity and place, and appear to have assumed that place theory, as anadjuncttothelackofawideracceptanceofanindigenousarchitectural

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

108

definition, provides a way forward for Australian architectural practitioners whowishtoincorporateanAboriginalcomponentintotheirdesignprocessand product. Both approaches attract multiple modes of criticality, implicating issuesofculturalhistoryandrelationshiptothepoliticsofnationalismandreconciliation, as well as to methods of historical analysis.



NOTES

James Davidson presented a version of this paper to the 61st Annual Meeting of the SAH at Cincinnati, April 2008; as did Memmott at the 25th annual conference of SAHANZ, “History in Practice” Geelong, July 2008. A draft appeared in the proceedings of the latter, which were edited by David Beynon & Ursula de Jong.

1. Conferences of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand have been held annually since 1984. The current analysis, however, does not include any relevant papers that may have been delivered in the third (1986) SAHANZ Conference, since no proceedings from this conference have been located by the authors.

2. Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand was first published in 1989. From 1989 to 1999 (inclusive, vols. 1-10), one volume was published per year each comprising one issue, except in the case of vols. 2 & 3 which were published as a double issue. From 2000-01, one volume (vol. 11) was published, comprising two issues over the two years. From 2002-07, one volume was published per year (vols. 12-17), comprising two issues per year. The journal thus totals 17 volumes and 24 issues to date (1989-2007).

3. Kevin Pope & John Terrell, “Environmental Setting of Human Migrations in the Circum-Pacific Region,” Journal of Biogeography 35 (2008): 1-21.

4. Nigel Prickett, Maori Origins, from Asia to Aotearoa (Auckland: David Bateman Ltd. & Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2001), 16, 17.

5. Of the Austronesian language areas, the only ones not covered in this current regional analysis are Mayotte Island off Madagascar and pockets of the interior of Indo-China (Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.).

6. For example, see Paul Oliver, Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Yuan Lim Jee, The Malay House: Rediscovering Malaysia’s Indigenous Shelter System (Pulau Pinang: Institut Masyarakat, 1987); Roger Boulay, La Maison Kanak (Marseille: Editions Parèntheses, 1990); Roxana Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (Singapore & London: Thames & Hudson, 1997); James Fox, Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Design for Living (Canberra: Department of Anthropology in association with the Comparative Austronesian Project, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1993); Janet Carsten & Stephen Hugh-Jones, About the House: Lèvi-Strauss and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

7. Julia Gatley, “SAHANZ: The First 20 Years, 1984-2004,” Fabrications 13, no. 2 (2004): 63-87.

8. Mike Austin, “Elgin in the South Pacific: The Work of Mack Ruff,” Fabrications 11, no. 2 (2001): iii-x.

9. Wallace Ruff & Ruth Ruff, “The Village Studies Program for the Recording of Traditional Architecture,” in Sepik Heritage: Tradition and Change in Papua New Guinea, ed. Nancy Lutkehaus (Bathurst: Robert Brown and Associates, 1990); Martin Fowler, “Colonial Architecture’s Fraught Grappling with Melanesian Traditions,” in In the Making: Architecture’s Past: The Proceedings of the Eighteenth Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Darwin, Australia, September/October 2001, ed. Kevin Green (Darwin: SAHANZ, 2001), 84-100.

10. Deidre Brown, “Post-European and Indigenous Architectural Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand,” in Formulation Fabrication: The Architecture of History: The Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand, November, 2000, ed. Andrew Leach & Emina Petrovic (Wellington: SAHANZ, 2000), 15-21.

11. Peter Wood, “The Maori Land Occupation Structures of Waikaremoana, New Zealand,” in Formulation Fabrication, ed. Leach & Petrovic, 163-68.

12. Mike Austin, “Landscape and the New Zealand Maori,” Landscape and 20th Century Urban Design in Australasia (Canberra: SAHANZ & Australian National University, 1989), 52-58.

13. For a much later ethnographic case study of the Gate Pa near Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, see Sarah Treadwell, “Images of Gate Pa,” In Contested Terrains: Proceedings of the XXIII Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Fremantle, Western Australia, September 29-October 2, 2006, ed. Terrance McMinn, John Stephens & Steve Basson (Fremantle: SAHANZ, 2006), 557-62. Mike Austin argues that the pa is the iconic New Zealand monument in “Kiwi Architecture: Modernism Recycled,” Fabrications 14, nos. 1&2 (2004): iii-ix.

110

14. Paul Memmott & Carroll Go-Sam, “Australian Indigenous Architecture: Its Forms and Evolution,” in Thresholds: Papers of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Launceston and Hobart, Australia, 1999, ed. Richard Blythe & Rory Spence (Launceston: SAHANZ, 1999), 233-40.

15. Mike Austin, “Watery Ground: Island Architecture,” in On What Ground(s)?, ed. Sean Pickersgill & Peter Scriver (Adelaide: SAHANZ, 1997), 9-14; “Navigational Maps and Architectural Mappings,” in Thresholds, ed. Blythe & Spence, 9-12; and “Pacific Island Architecture,” Fabrications 11, no. 2 (2001): 13-19.

16. See, for example, Austin “Pacific Island Architecture,” 13; and Memmott & Go-Sam, “Australian Indigenous Architecture,” 235.

17. Gatley, “SAHANZ,” 67, 68.

18. Paul Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley: Australian Aboriginal Architecture (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2007). See Appendix for a guide to this work.

19. In Australia, much work on South-East Asian architecture has already been accomplished alongside the limited efforts of SAHANZ by the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) founded in 1997 by Dr Samer Akkach and his colleagues at the School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design of the University of Adelaide.

20. Paul Memmott, “From the ’Curry to the ’Weal: Aboriginal Town Camps and Compounds of the Western Back-Blocks,” David Saunders Memorial Keynote Lecture to Sarsparella to Muckadilla: A Conference on Towns in Australia and New Zealand, Brisbane, September 30, 1994; published in Fabrications 7 (1996): 1-50.

21. There was also a paper on Rastafarian architecture in Jamaica and another on Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. See Elizabeth Pigou-Dennis, “Fabricating a Space and an Architecture: The Rastafarian Experience of Jamaica”; and Glen Hill & Kabita Chakma, “Using Architectural History to Invent a Nation: The Case of the Indigenous Architecture of the Chittagong Hill Tracts,” in Formulation Fabrication, ed. Leach & Petrovic, 73-84 & 401-10 resp. These papers lie outside the geographic area that we have nominated for our analysis.

22. Pers. comm., Andrew Leach, August 2007. Leach was a convenor of this conference.

23. Roxanne Waterson of the University of Singapore also assisted with this session.

24. Deidre Brown, an eminent Maori scholar of Ngapuhi and Ngati Kahu iwi (or tribes) has contributed six papers to SAHANZ conferences and was an Honorary Editor of Fabrications from 2004-07. The first issue of Fabrications published under Brown’s co-editorship (14, 2004) took the theme “Kiwi Architecture” and included papers by Austin, McKay and Linzey on indigenous themes. Carroll Go-Sam is an Aboriginal scholar from the AERC and is of the Dyirbal tribe of the north-east Australian rainforest region. She has co-authored a number of works with Memmott including “Australian Indigenous Architecture” (1999). Kevin O’Brien is a Torres Strait Islander architect from the eastern or Meriam people of the Torres Straits. He is also a scholar who came through the AERC and is now a leading indigenous practitioner. He contributed the paper “Architecture and Aboriginality” to the 2003 SAHANZ conference, in Progress: 20th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia & New Zealand, ed. Maryam Gusheh & Naomi Stead (Sydney: SAHANZ, 2003), 219-25. Albert Refiti is a Samoan scholar who contributed papers at the 2000 and 2002 conferences; he has held editorial roles for the journal Interstices (published in New Zealand). Ngarino Ellis (Nga Puhi, Ngati Porou) is affiliated with the Department of Art History, University of Auckland; her Maori grandmother was born on the porch of a Ngati Porou meeting house at the mouth of the Waiapu River in New Zealand’s North Island. Ellen Andersen is also a Maori scholar, being of Ngati Raukawa descent, and having completed her Bachelor of Arts in Classics and Architectural Studies at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

25. Gatley “SAHANZ,” 71.

26. Fowler “Colonial architecture’s fraught grappling with Melanesian traditions”; Alberti Refiti, “Fabricating Difference and the Periphery of Architecture,” in Formulation Fabrication, ed. Leach & Petrovic, 527-32; Michael Tawa, “Grounding the Question: Implications of Indigenous Narrative Practice for Architectural History,” in On What Ground(s)?, ed. Pickersgill & Scriver, 229-35; Christoph Schnoor, “Celebrating Idea over Reality: Some Approximations of the ‘Primitive’ in Oceanic and European architecture,” in Celebration: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Napier, New Zealand, 24-27 September 2005, ed. Andrew Leach & Gill Matthewson (Napier: SAHANZ, 2005), 323-28.

27. For example, Stephen Long, “Between the Georgina and the Great Western Railway: The Transformation and Maintenance of Aboriginal Architecture in North-West Queensland” and Shaneen Fantin, “Recognising Aboriginal Architecture from Northeast Arnhem Land:


111

The ‘Ancestral Aesthetic’ in Yolngu Dwellings and Ceremonial Structures,” in Additions to Architectural History: Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Brisbane, Australia, 4-7 October 2002, ed. John Macarthur & Antony Moulis (Brisbane: SAHANZ, 2002), published on cd-rom.

28. Sarah Treadwell, “Rangiatea: Architecture Between the Colonial and the Indigenous,” Fabrications 2-3 (1990-91): 19-34.

29. Brown, “Post-European and Indigenous Architectural Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand,” 20.

30. Pers. comm. Brown & McKay, January 17, 2008. Brown went on to say: ‘Certainly in New Zealand history and anthropology there has been a similar movement towards ‘representation of Maori life’ by non-Maori scholars. Most notably the late historian Michael King, who did some important work on Maori before he felt ‘forced’ out of the area, and Professor Dame Anne Salmond, who moved from studying marae to looking at Cook’s relationship to Maori.’

31. Deidre Brown, “Clothed not Clad: Maori woven architecture,” in Celebration, ed. Leach & Matthewson, 62.

32. Mike Austin, “Rapa Nui: Beyond the Limit,” in Limits: Proceedings from the 21st Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2004, ed. Harriet Edquist & Hélène Frichot (Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2004), 9-13.

33. Deidre Brown, “He Hokonga Whare e Kimihia: Seeking the Corner of a House,” in Limits, ed. Edquist & Frichot, 64-68.

34. Example see criticisms of revisionist historians noted by Brown, “Post-European and Indigenous Architectural Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand,” 18.

35. Compare Tawa, “Grounding the Question” and Brown “Post-European and Indigenous Architectural Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand”.

36. Ngarino Ellis, “Narratives of Change: Ngati Porou Architecture in the 19th Century,” in Formulation Fabrication, ed. Leach & Petrovic, 127-38. For a comparative set of data sources on Australian Aboriginal architectural research see Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley.

37. Ellis, “Narratives of Change,” 128.

38. In this respect Australian scholars tend to follow the ethical guidelines of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS): http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/research_program/grants.

39. Deidre Brown, “Clothed not Clad: Maori Woven Architecture,” in Celebration, ed. Leach & Matthewson, 59-63.

40. Long, “Between the Georgina and the Great Western Railway”; also Martin Fowler, “The Burning Question in Papuan Architecture,” in Progress, ed. Gusheh & Stead, 114-19; and “Magical Limits: Other, Others, Gods, Dogs, Crocodiles, Architectures, Other’s Architecture’s,” in Limits, ed. Edquist & Frichot, 160-65.

41. Memmott & Go-Sam, “Australian Indigenous Architecture,” 238; Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley, 300.

42. Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley, 300.

43. Austin, “Pacific Island Architecture,” 17.

44. Austin, “Kiwi Architecture,” viii.

45. Martin Fowler, “Five Types of Traditional Melanesian Architecture of Papua New Guinea,” in Additions to Architectural History, ed. Macarthur & Moulis.

46. Ellen Andersen, “Pukekaraka: A Study in Architecture and Whakapapa,” in Additions to Architectural History, ed. Macarthur & Moulis, 3.

47. McKay, Bill. “Looking at Maori Architecture,” in Additions to Architectural History, ed. Macarthur & Moulis.

48. Bill McKay & Antonia Walmsley, “Maori Time: Notions of Space, Time and Building Form in the South Pacific,” in Progress, ed. Gusheh & Stead, 199-204.

49. Mike Austin, “Polynesian Influences in New Zealand Architecture,” in Formulation Fabrication, ed. Leach & Petrovic, 121-26.

50. Ellis, “Narratives of Change,” 129.

51. Fantin, “Recognising Aboriginal architecture from Northeast Arnhem Land”; McKay, “Looking at Maori Architecture”.

52. Andersen, “Pukekaraka,” 3.

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON


53. Andersen, “Pukekaraka,” 8.

54. The “bach” is a term for the New Zealand settler’s basic hut, which for Wood symbolises the colonial conquest of the land. – Wood, “The Maori Land Occupation Structures of Waikaremoana, New Zealand,” 165.

55. Wood, “The Maori Land Occupation Structures of Waikaremoana, New Zealand”, 163.

56. Michael Linzey, “On the Name: Te Papa,” in Formulation Fabrication, ed. Leach & Petrovic, 471-78; “A Fault-line at Te Papa: The Use of a Metaphor,” Fabrications 17, no. 1 (2007): 69-82; Paul Williams, “Bicultural Space in the Museum: The Case of Te Marae,” Fabrications 16, no. 1 (2006): 91-104.

57. Paul Memmott, “Aboriginal Signs and Architectural Meanings,” Architectural Theory Review 1, no. 2 (1996-97): 79-100; and 2, no. 1 (1996/97): 38-64.

58. But on this see Mike Austin, “Pacific Culture Centres and Antipodean Museums,” in Museum Gallery and Cultural Architecture in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Region: Essays in Antipodean Identity, ed. Michael J. Ostwald & Steven D. Fleming (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007), 150-62. Although one SAHANZ paper deals with the National Museum of Australia (Brent Allpress, “Ornamental Misappropriation in Recent Australian Architecture,” in In the Making, ed. Kevin Green, 291-304), it does not focus on indigenous themes.

59. Paul Memmott & Joseph Reser, “Design Concepts and Processes for Public Aboriginal Architecture,” People and Physical Environment Research (PaPER): The Person-Environment and Cultural Heritage Journal of Australia and New Zealand 55-56 (2000): 69-86.

60. Brown, “Nga Whare Matauranga Maori: The Recent History of Maori Tertiary Architecture,” in Thresholds, ed. Blythe & Spence, 22.

61. Ursula de Jong, “Contested Terrain: Point Nepean, Victoria,” in Contested Terrains, ed. McMinn, Stephens & Basson, 81-88.

62. de Jong, “Contested Terrain,” 82-83.

63. Angelique Edmonds, “Remote Control: Sustained Encounters of Difference in Aboriginal Living Environments in Arnhem Land,” in Contested Terrains, ed. McMinn, Stephens & Basson, 111-17.

64. Edmonds, “Remote Control,” 115.

65. Long, “Between the Georgina and the Great Western Railway”.

66. Timothy O’Rourke, “Notes on Dyirbalngan Dwellings Ethno-Architecture in the Rainforests of Northeastern Queensland,” in Additions to Architectural History, ed. Macarthur & Moulis.

67. Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley, 13, 16.

68. Fantin, “Recognising Aboriginal Architecture from northeast Arnhem Land”.

69. Fantin, “Recognising Aboriginal architecture from northeast Arnhem Land,” 9.

70. Shaneen Fantin & Paul Memmott, “Yolngu Ceremonial Architecture,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, ed. Jeffrey Kaplan & Bron R. Taylor (Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005), 106-07.

71. See Treadwell and Budgett on the Cook Islands.

72. Ellen Andersen, “Pukekaraka: A Study in Architecture and Whakapapa,” in Additions to Architectural History, ed. Macarthur & Moulis, 7.

73. Andersen, “Pukekaraka,” 6, 7.

74. Paul Memmott, “An Introduction to Architecture + Building Traditions: Lessons from Ethno-Architects,” in Additions to Architectural History, ed. Macarthur & Moulis, 6.

75. Mike Linzey, “Bi-Cultural Architecture: evaluating the contribution of Te Kooti,” in In the Making, ed. Green, 101-08.

76. Austin, “Pacific Building: The Construction of Tradition,” in Additions to Architectural History, ed. Macarthur & Moulis.

77. Refiti, “Uneven Boundaries that do not Flatten,” Additions to Architectural History, ed. Macarthur & Moulis.

78. Refiti, “Uneven Boundaries that do not Flatten,” 1.

79. McKay, “Looking at Maori Architecture”, 1.

80. Brown, “The Whare on Exhibition”, 2002.


81. McKay, “Halfcaste or Bicultural: John Scott, Maori and Architecture in the 1960s,” in Contested Terrains, ed. McMinn, Stephens & Basson, 363-69.

82. See also Russell Walden, Voices of Silence: New Zealand’s Chapel of Futuna (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1987), 60, 62.

83. Treadwell, “Rangiatea,” 30.

84. Budgett, “Congregating Practices: Church building in the Cook Islands,” in Celebration, ed. Leach & Matthewson, 65-71.

85. Budgett, “Congregating Practices,” 69.

86. Budgett, “Contested Terrain: Heritage Conservation in the Cook Islands,” in Contested Terrains, ed. McMinn, Stephens & Basson, 47-53.

87. Budgett, “Contested Terrain,” 49.

88. See Richard Handler & Jocelyn Linnekin, “Tradition, Genuine or Spurious,” Journal of American Folklore 97, no. 385 (1984), 273-90; and Bruce Rigsby, Fiona Powell, Lee Sackett, et al., “Expert Report: Combined Gunggandji and Mandingalbay Yidinji (Q6016/01),” in Native Title Claim, unpublished report to the North Queensland Land Council, 2002.

89. Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 13.

90. Shils, Tradition, 19.

91. Handler & Linnekin, “Tradition, Genuine or Spurious,” 273.

92. Compare Michael Linzey, “Bicultural Architecture: Evaluating the Contribution of Te Kooti,” in In the Making, ed. Green, 101-08.

93. Reference to be supplied by Memmott.

94. Austin, “Pacific Building,” 5.

95. Austin, “Watery Ground,” 10.

96. Austin, “Watery Ground,” 10

97. Compare Austin, “Rapa Nui”.

98. McKay “Kiwi Architecture,” 296.

99. McKay, “The Whare Face of Modernism,” in FIRM(ness) commodity De-light?: Questioning the Canons: Papers from the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia, 1998, ed. Julie Willis, Philip Goad & Andrew Hutson (Melbourne: SAHANZ, 1998), 262.

100. Austin, “Polynesian Influences in New Zealand Architecture,” 124.

101. Brown, “Post-European and Indigenous Architectural Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand,” 16.

102. Brown, “Apirana Ngata and the School of Maori Arts and Crafts,” In Loyalty and Disloyalty in the Architecture of the British Empire and Commonwealth, ed. Hugh McGuire (Auckland: SAHANZ, 1996), 1-13.

103. Brown, “Post-European and Indigenous Architectural Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand,” 16,17.

104. Austin, “Polynesians in Auckland,” in Contested Terrains, ed. McMinn, Stephens & Basson, 15-18.

105. Greenop, “Uncanny Brisbane: New Ways of Looking at Urban Indigenous Place,” in History in Practice: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia, 3-6 July 2008, ed. David Beynon & Ursula de Jong (Geelong: SAHANZ, 2008), cd-rom.

106. Hill, “Dreaming the Block: Three Decades of Architectural Imagining for Redfern’s Indigenous Community,” in Contested Terrains, ed. McMinn, Stephens & Basson, 233-34.

107. Deidre Brown, “Nga Whare Matauranga Maori: The Recent History of Maori Tertiary Architecture,” in Thresholds, ed. Blythe & Spence, 19-24.

108. Brown, “Nga Whare Matauranga Maori,” 24.


Aitken, Richard. “Oriental and Oceanian Influence on Australian Garden Buildings.” In Asia-Australasia: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, July 3-7 1992 (hereafter Asia-Australasia, 1992), Geelong, Victoria: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 1992.

Andersen, Ellen. “Pukekaraka: A Study in Architecture and Whakapapa.” In Additions to Architectural History: Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Brisbane, Australia, 4-7 October 2002, edited by John Macarthur & Antony Moulis, cd-rom (hereafter Additions to Architectural History, 2002). Brisbane: SAHANZ, 2002.

Anderson, Graeme & Gina Jones. “Design Constraints Particular to Wellington”. In Regional Responses: Papers and Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, Christchurch, New Zealand, 6-8 July 1991, edited by Ian Lochhead, 157-61. Christchurch: SAHANZ, 1995.

Austin, Mike. “Elgin in the South Pacific: The Work of Mack Ruff.” In Fabrications 11, no. 2 (2001): iii-x.

———. “Kiwi Architecture: Modernism Recycled.” In Fabrications 14, nos. 1&2 (2004): iii-ix.

———. “Landscape and the New Zealand Maori.” In Landscape and 20th Century Urban Design in Australasia, 52-58. Canberra, Australian National University & SAHANZ, 1989.

———. “Navigational Maps and Architectural Mappings.” In Thresholds: Papers of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Launceston and Hobart, Australia, 1999, ed. Richard Blythe & Rory Spence (hereafter Thresholds), 9-12. Launceston: SAHANZ, 1999.

———. “Notes on the Colonial City.” In Fabrications 2-3 (1992): 35-44.

———. “Pacific Building: The Construction of Tradition.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

———. “Pacific Island Architecture.” In Fabrications 11, no. 2 (2001): 13-19.

———. “Polynesian Influences in New Zealand Architecture.” In Formulation Fabrication: The Architecture of History, Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand, November 2000, edited by Andrew Leach & Emina Petrovic (hereafter Formulation Fabrication, 2000), 121-126. Wellington: SAHANZ, 2000.

———. “Polynesians in Auckland.” In Contested Terrains: Proceedings of the XXIII Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Fremantle, Western Australia, September 29-October 2, 2006 (hereafter Contested Terrains, 2006), edited by Terrance McMinn, John Stephens & Steve Basson, 15-18. Fremantle: SAHANZ, 2006.

———. “Rapa Nui: Beyond the Limit.” In Limits: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2004, edited by Harriet Edquist & Hélène Frichot (hereafter Limits, 2004), vol. 1, 9-13. Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2004.

———. “Watery Ground: Island Architecture”. In On What Ground(s)?: Conference Proceedings of Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, edited by Sean Pickersgill & Peter Scriver (hereafter On What Ground(s)? 1997), 9-14. Adelaide: SAHANZ, 1997.

Bell, Peter. Review of Traditional Architecture in the Gilbert Islands: A Cultural Perspective, by John Hockings. In Fabrications 2-3 (1990-1991): 58.

Brown, Deidre. “Apirana Ngata and the School of Maori Arts and Crafts.” In Loyalty and Disloyalty in the Architecture of the British Empire and Commonwealth, edited by Hugh McGuire, 1-13. Auckland: SAHANZ, 1997.

Indigenous Culture and Architecture in the South Pacific Region: Selected SAHANZ Sources Prepared by Paul Memmott & James Davidson


———. “Clothed not Clad: Maori woven architecture”. In Celebration: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, Napier, New Zealand, 24-27 September, 2005, edited by Andrew Leach & Gill Matthewson (hereafter Celebration, 2005), 59-63. Napier: SAHANZ, 2005.

———. “He Hokonga Whare e Kimihia: Seeking the Corner of a House.” In Limits, 2004, vol. 1, 64-68.

———. “Nga Whare Matauranga Maori: The Recent History of Maori Tertiary Architecture.” In Thresholds, 1999, 19-24.

———. “Post-European and Indigenous Architectural Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand.” In Formulation Fabrication, 2000, 15-21.

———. “The Whare on Exhibition.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

Budgett, Jeanette. “Congregating Practices: Church building in the Cook Islands.” In Celebration, 2005, 65-71.

———. “Contested Terrain: Heritage Conservation in the Cook Islands.” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 47-53.

———. “Negotiated Boundaries.” In Limits, 2004, vol. 1, 69-74.

Davidson, James. “Western ‘Architectural’ Ideology and its Impact on the Traditional Building Practices of the Maya Peoples of Guatemala and Southern Mexico.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

De Jong, Ursula. “Contested Terrain: Point Nepean, Victoria.” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 81-88.

Edmonds, Angelique. “Remote Control: Sustained Encounters of Difference in Aboriginal Living Environments in Arnhem Land.” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 111-17.

Ellis, Ngarino. “Narratives of Change: Ngati Porou Architecture in the 19th Century.” In Formulation Fabrication, 2000, 127-38.

Engels-Schwarzpaul, Tina. “-13.833333/-171.73334 in 51.466667/14.766666 Whose Tropics, Whose Fale?” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 119-25.

———. “Ornamental symbolism: Means of persuasion and narratives of identity in Aotearoa/New Zealand.” In In the Making: Architecture’s Past, Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Darwin, Australia, September/October 2001, edited by Kevin Green (hereafter In the Making, 2001), 109-22. Darwin: SAHANZ, 2001.

Fantin, Shaneen. “Recognising Aboriginal architecture from northeast Arnhem Land: the ‘ancestral aesthetic’ in Yolngu dwellings and ceremonial structures.” In Additions to Architectural History 2002.

Fowler, Martin. “The Burning Question in Papuan Architecture”. In Progress: 20th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia & New Zealand, edited by Maryam Gusheh & Naomi Stead (hereafter Progress, 2003), 114-119. Sydney: SAHANZ, 2003.

———. “Colonial Architecture’s Fraught Grappling with Melanesian Traditions.” In In the Making, 2001, 84-100.

———. “Five Types of Traditional Melanesian Architecture of Papua New Guinea.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

———. “Magical Limits: Other, Others, gods, dogs, crocodiles, architectures, Other’s Architecture’s.” In Limits, 2004, vol. 1, 160-165. Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2004.

Gatley, Julia. “SAHANZ: The First 20 Years, 1984-2004.” In Fabrications 13, no. 2 (2004): 63-87.

Hill, Glen. “Dreaming the Block: Three Decades of Architectural Imagining for Redfern’s Indigenous Community.” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 227-35.

Linzey, Mike. “Bi-Cultural Architecture: evaluating the contribution of Te Kooti.” In In the Making, 2001, 101-08.

———. “A Fault-line at Te Papa: The Use of a Metaphor.” In Fabrications 17, no. 1 (2007): 69-82.

———. “On the Pointing Signification of the Meeting House.” In Fabrications 14, nos. 1&2 (2004): 13-20.

Long, Stephen. “Between the Georgina and the Great Western Railway: the Transformation and Maintenance of Aboriginal Architecture in North-West Queensland.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

116

McCarthy, Christine. “‘The Maori House’, ‘Te Pa’ and ‘Captain Hankey’s House’: Bicultural Architecture in New Zealand at the Turn of the Century.” Fabrications 11, no. 1 (2000): 62-78.

———. “Partial architectures: Post World War II New Zealand Government Housing.” In Fabrications 13, no. 1 (2003): 33-62.

McGrath, Ann. Review of Just for Living, Aboriginal Perceptions of Housing in North West Australia, by Helen Ross. In Fabrications 1 (1989): 96-97.

McKay, Bill. “Halfcaste or bicultural: John Scott, Maori and architecture in the 1960s.” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 363-69.

———. “Looking at Maori Architecture.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

———. “Maori Architecture: Transforming Western Notions of Architecture.” In Fabrications 14, no. 1&2 (2004): 1-12.

———. “Resonant Time and Cyclic Architecture: Notions of Time and Architectural History in New Zealand”. In Limits, 2004, vol. 2, 295-300. Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2004.

———. “The Whare Face of Modernism”. In FIRM(ness) commodity De-light?: questioning the canons: Papers from the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia, 1998 (hereafter FIRM(ness) commodity De-light? 1998), edited by Julie Willis, Philip Goad & Andrew Hutson, 259-62. Melbourne: SAHANZ, 1998.

McKay, Bill & Antonia Walmsley. “Maori Time: Notions of Space, Time and Building Form in the South Pacific”. In Progress, 2003, 199-204.

Maguire, Hugh. “All things bright and beautiful: Architectural Bi-culturalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand”. In FIFIRM(ness) commodity De-light? 1998, 209-18.

Memmott, Paul. “From the ‘Curry to the ‘Weal’: Aboriginal Town Camps and Compounds of the Western Back-Blocks.” David Saunders Memorial Keynote Lecture to Sarsparella to Muckadilla, A Conference on Towns in Australia and New Zealand, SAHANZ, Brisbane, September 30, 1994.

———. “An Introduction to Architecture + Building Traditions: Lessons from Ethno-architects.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

Memmott, Paul & Carroll Go-Sam. “Australian Indigenous Architecture: Its Forms and Evolution.” In Thresholds, 1999, 233-40.

O’Brien, Kevin. “Architecture and Aboriginality.” In Progress, 2003, 219-25.

O’Rourke, Timothy. “Notes on Dyirbalngan dwellings Ethno-architecture in the rainforests of northeastern Queensland.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

Petersen, Anna. “Signs of Higher Life: Maori Whare and the European Concept of Civilization, c.1800-1850.” In Formulation Fabrication, 2000, 153-62.

Rapoport, David. “Toraja Architecture in Sulawesi.” In Asia-Australasia, 1992.

Refiti, Albert. “Fabricating Difference and the Periphery of Architecture.” In Formulation Fabrication, 2000, 527-32.

———. “Uneven boundaries that do not flatten.” In Additions to Architectural History, 2002.

Schnoor, Christoph. “Celebrating Idea over Reality: Some Approximations of the ‘Primitive’ in Oceanic and European Architecture.” In Celebration, 2005, 323-28.

Skinner, Robin. “Celebrating the Lord’s Supper at Orona.” In Celebration, 2005, 329-33.

Southcombe, Mark & Wendy Pettigrew. “European Fruit: ‘Tikitiki’, a Treaty Signatory’s House.” In Celebration, 2005, 341-46.

Speed, Graeme. “Australian Aboriginal Shelters.” In SAHANZ 87, Proceedings of Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand: papers: fourth annual conference, Adelaide, 9-10 May 1987, edited by Paul-Alan Johnson, 35-38. Sydney: SAHANZ, , 1991.

Tawa, Michael. “Grounding the Question: Implications of Indigenous Narrative Practice for Architectural History.” In On What Ground(s)? 1997, 229-35.

Ting, John. “The Egalitarian Architecture of the Iban Longhouse.” In Celebration, 2005, 359-65.

———. “Fort Alice: Syncretic Architecture in Sarawak under the Brooke Regimes.” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 543-49.


117

Tjahjono, Gunawan. “Space and Place in the Javanese Architectural Tradition.” In Asia-Australasia, 1992.

Treadwell, Jeremy. “Constructions of Privacy in the Cook Islands.” In Limits, 2004, vol. 2, 492-96. Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2004.

———. “Continental Architecture – Island Buildings: A Chinese Court Building in Rarotonga.” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 551-56.

Treadwell, Sarah. “Dazzling Reflections: Images of Architecture in Missionary Polynesia”. In FIRM(ness) commodity De-light? 1998, 397-404.

———. “Electric Images: Illuminating Anxiety.” In Thresholds, 1999, 351-57.

———. “Heavenly Groundings: Missionary Architectural Practice in Nineteenth Century New Zealand.” In On What Ground(s)? 1997, 243-49.

———. “Images of Gate Pa.” In Contested Terrains, 2006, 557-62.

———. “Pacific Architecture of the Transit of Venus.” In Limits, 2004, vol. 2, 497-502. Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2004.

———. “Rangiatea: Architecture Between the Colonial and the Indigenous.” In Fabrications 2-3 (1990-1991): 19-34.

Williams, Paul. “Bicultural Space in the Museum: The Case of Te Marae.” In Fabrications 16, no. 1 (2006): 91-104.

Wood, Peter. “The Maori Land Occupation Structures of Waikaremoana, New Zealand.” In Formulation Fabrication, 2000, 163-68.

MEMMOTT & DAVIDSON

indigenous culture and architecture in - sahanz definitions of architecture that accommodate...

Documents