Aotearoa New Zealand can be found at 40.9006° S, 174.8860° E in the South Pacific ocean. The last major landmass to be discovered. The character of the landscape changes dramatically over short distances. Shaped by tectonic and volcanic action the landscape falls from a vertical spine to an ever-changing coastline of beaches or rugged rocky bays and headlands.
The Māori settled Aotearoa between 1250 and 1300 years ago. The Māori talk of `whakapapa’, lineage. The whakapapa is often recited as belonging to an Iwi (tribe), a place, an Awa (river), a Maunga (mountain) and the Waka (canoe) on which their tribe arrived. The Māori whakapapa/belong to the land.
Where the Australian Aboriginal people tread lightly on the land, the Māori often cut into the land. A natural response to the landform and the need for prospect and protection. Both Māori and Australian Aboriginal people belong to the land, but each with a different expression.
"Last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart"
– Rudyard Kipling, describing Aotearoa New Zealand, 1922Belonging
The Modern Project sought an abstraction, a break from the past. Now a more complex pluralist condition prevails. Less dogmatic, more visceral, and fundamental. We see ourselves as observers, developing a response, rather than arriving with a response from a formal dogma. We seek both intellectual rigour and an emotional response derived from the opportunity at hand. Each project has its own `limited concept’ a term coined by the American Architect Stephen Holl.
Thingness. A whole universe can be found in a considered detail. Materials carry their own character. We enjoy using materials that patina with age. There is beauty in a thing well made.
Atmosphere. The revered Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor talks of atmosphere, and atmospheric density. A building need not be an icon. Indeed, the paradox is that if every building were to be an icon, then no building would be an icon. Hence the call for atmospheric density, adding to the atmospheric density of a place by way of a carefully considered response rather than with an ego piece.
Belonging is `of the origin’, Arche. Architecture is eventually self-referential. Read and realised on its own terms, techne. (Arche/techne from the ancient Greek). The realisation, techne, refers to the origin and then responds to the acts of dwelling and being. Both ancient and modern. A building may be of the land, rather than just on the land. Or a building may sit lightly as an `other’.
Māori buildings respond to the human form, form follows mana whenua (the ancient people of the land). Modern buildings are a product of their materiality and spatial arrangement. Materials will often come from a local context, as may forms. There are many archetypes from European settlement. These need not be incompatible with belonging.
Thingness
"Belonging is a key tenet of our concept generation. What is the physical context? What is the cultural context? How can a building belong to its site, its context, its place, its people? We seek to observe and respond to local character, express a belonging to the whenua (land), representing the people. We look backward to look forward."
"We look backward
to look forward"