Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architectural Practice and Theory 9781350294325, 1350294322

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of contributors
Introduction Paul Memmott and Marcel Vellinga
Part 1 Design practice and research methods in applying the vernacular to contemporary contexts
1 The architectural vernacularization of Pacific aid practice Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei
2 Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui: A genealogy of Māori meeting houses Savannah Brown (Ngāti Whātua ki Kaipara, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai), Amber Ruckes (Tūhoe), Faye Mendes-Underwood (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa), Aisea Fanamanu, Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Ka
3 ‘Tropical architecture’: Cultural collisions and reverberations in the vernacular of Aotearoa New Zealand Jacqueline McIntosh and Bruno Marques
4 Linguistics and architecture, creolistics and history, or, is Norfolk Island architecture (a) creole? Joshua Nash
Part 2 Bridging between local cultures and influences of modernity
5 Is vernacular the new modern? Reflections on movements, changes and preservation in Indonesia Gabriele Weichart
6 Adaptive uses of traditional windbreaks and bough shades for Indigenous housing in Australia Timothy O’Rourke
7 Building on Indigenous homelands in Arnhem Land since the 1980s: Harnessing appropriate technologies and partnerships as a new procurement vernacular Hannah Robertson
8 The resurgence of Indigenous knowledge in adapting vernaculars: Implications of climate change for Rimajol architectural traditions James Miller
9 Papua New Guinea’s vernacular architecture, from relics to reframing culture: Kunguma and Tubusereia R. H. Rusch, J. H. N. Amar and L. A. Armitage
Part 3 Bridging for diasporic peoples
10 Archipelagic views: Vernacular transformation and inter-colonial agricultural trade networks in the late nineteenth-century Asia Pacific Amanda Achmadi, Karen Burns and Paul Walker
11 Hand in hand with crossed top plates: Mapping the contribution of Chinese carpenters to the production and installation of Melbourne’s prefabricated ‘Singapore cottages’ John Ting
12 Diasporic vernaculars? Different Australian commercial precincts David Beynon and Ian Woodcock
13 Translating spaces: Speculative landscape futures for new climate diasporas Lizzie Yarina, Penny Allan and Martin Bryant
Part 4 The vernacular in postcolonial modernization, politicization and ­nation-building
14 Historic church vernacular in the Cook Islands: Modernization, conservation and change Carolyn Hill
15 Appropriating the native: Shifting definitions of the vernacular in twentieth-century Philippine architecture Edson G. Cabalfin
16 From cultural symbol to societal sign: The question of the Kanak traditional house in present-day New Caledonia Louis Lagarde and Yves-Béalo Gony
Index

Citation preview

Design and the ­Vernacular

Design and the Vernacular Interpretations for Contemporary Architectural Practice and Theory Paul Memmott, John Ting, Tim O’Rourke and Marcel Vellinga

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2024 Selection and editorial matter copyright © Paul Memmott, John Ting, Tim O’Rourke and Marcel Vellinga, 2024 Individual chapters copyright © their authors, 2024 Paul Memmott, John Ting, Tim O’Rourke and Marcel Vellinga have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. Cover design by Eleanor Rose Cover Image: Kampung Ayer, Brunei, the largest ‘water village’ in the Malay archipelago. Photo, 2009 © Bernard Spragg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-9430-1 ePDF: 978-1-3502-9432-5 eBook: 978-1-3502-9433-2 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of contributors Introduction  Paul Memmott and Marcel Vellinga

vii 1

Part 1  Design practice and research methods in applying the vernacular to contemporary contexts

19

1

The architectural vernacularization of Pacific aid practice  Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei

21

2

Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui: A genealogy of Māori meeting houses  Savannah Brown (Ngāti Whātua ki Kaipara, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai), Amber Ruckes (Tūhoe), Faye MendesUnderwood (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa), Aisea Fanamanu, Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu), Jason Ingham 35

3

‘Tropical architecture’: Cultural collisions and reverberations in the vernacular of Aotearoa New Zealand  Jacqueline McIntosh and Bruno Marques

49

Linguistics and architecture, creolistics and history, or, is Norfolk Island architecture (a) creole?  Joshua Nash

65

4

Part 2  Bridging between local cultures and influences of modernity 5 6 7 8 9

Is vernacular the new modern? Reflections on movements, changes and preservation in Indonesia  Gabriele Weichart

85

87

Adaptive uses of traditional windbreaks and bough shades for Indigenous housing in Australia  Timothy O’Rourke

105

Building on Indigenous homelands in Arnhem Land since the 1980s: Harnessing appropriate technologies and partnerships as a new procurement vernacular  Hannah Robertson

117

The resurgence of Indigenous knowledge in adapting vernaculars: Implications of climate change for Rimajol architectural traditions  James Miller

134

Papua New Guinea’s vernacular architecture, from relics to reframing culture: Kunguma and Tubusereia  R. H. Rusch, J. H. N. Amar and L. A. Armitage

153

Part 3  Bridging for diasporic peoples

173

10 Archipelagic views: Vernacular transformation and inter-colonial agricultural trade networks in the late nineteenth-century Asia Pacific  Amanda Achmadi, Karen Burns and Paul Walker

175

11 Hand in hand with crossed top plates: Mapping the contribution of Chinese carpenters to the production and installation of Melbourne’s prefabricated ‘Singapore cottages’  John Ting

193

12 Diasporic vernaculars? Different Australian commercial precincts  David Beynon and Ian Woodcock

213

13 Translating spaces: Speculative landscape futures for new climate diasporas  Lizzie Yarina, Penny Allan and Martin Bryant

230

Part 4  The vernacular in postcolonial modernization, politicization and ­nation-building

247

14 Historic church vernacular in the Cook Islands: Modernization, conservation and change  Carolyn Hill

248

15 Appropriating the native: Shifting definitions of the vernacular in twentieth-century Philippine architecture  Edson G. Cabalfin

265

16 From cultural symbol to societal sign: The question of the Kanak traditional house in present-day New Caledonia  Louis Lagarde and Yves-Béalo Gony

281

Index

295

vi Contents

Contributors Dr Amanda Achmadi is Associate Professor in Architectural Design (Asian architecture and urbanism) at the University of Melbourne. Her research works explore the interrelated history of architecture, urban forms and identity politics in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia and broader Southeast Asia. Her recent publications include a chapter in Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture (Bloomsbury, 2019), articles in ABE and Fabrications. Forthcoming publications include chapters in Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2023), Routledge Handbook of Asian Cities (Routledge, forthcoming 2023) and AHRA Critiques (Routledge, forthcoming 2023). Dr Penny Allan is Professor of Landscape Architecture at UTS, Sydney. Her research explores how the interplay between landscape, environment, settlement and community influences the effectiveness of adaptive responses to extreme disturbance. Recent projects focus on adaptation to fire and coastal inundation in the Asia Pacific. Her two short films, based on this research, The Value of Water and Living with Fire, were exhibited at the 2021 Architecture Biennale in Venice and received a national research award. Dr Johari Hussein Nassor Amar is Lecturer/Unit Coordinator at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She holds a PhD in Sustainable Development and Architecture from Bond University in Australia, MSc in Real Estate Management from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and a BSc (Hons) in Land management and Valuation from the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Her research interests lie primary in the area of built heritage conservation, but she is also interested in exploring commercial real estate and land rights in the context of heritage management drawn from her over eight years of academic, research and a consultancy experience in the Property Industry. Dr Lynne A. Armitage is Associate Professor of Urban Development at Bond University in Queensland, Australia. She worked extensively in corporate property advisory roles in private and public sectors as well as professional organization in the UK and Australia. Lynne has led undergraduate and postgraduate property programmes in four universities in three countries – Australia, Papua New Guinea and Thailand. Her research centres on the nature of property markets in both mature and emerging markets with a particular interest in the modifying characteristics of legislative and societal developments. She has published and presented widely in international refereed journals and conferences and authored four books in the areas of commercial real estate, property valuation, urban economics and built heritage conservation. Dr David Beynon is Associate Professor in Architecture at the University of Tasmania. His research involves investigating the social, cultural and compositional dimensions of architecture, and adaptations of architectural content and meaning in relation to migration and cultural change. His current work includes investigations into the multicultural and postcolonial manifestations of contemporary urban environments and the creative possibilities for post-industrial architecture in Australia and Asia.

Professor Deidre Brown is of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu descent. She is the Codirector of MĀPIHI: Māori and Pacific Housing Research Centre and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. An authority in Māori architecture, she has undergraduate, masters and PhD degrees in architecture from Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Savannah Brown is of Ngāti Whātua ki Kaipara, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine and Ngāti Wai descent. She is a current PhD (Architecture) candidate and has a Bachelor of Architectural Studies and Master of Architecture (Professional) with First Class Honours from Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. As a designer at the architectural practice Design Tribe, she has worked on several projects with Māori communities. Dr Martin Bryant is a landscape architect, architect and Professor of Landscape Architecture at UTS Sydney. His research focuses on the socio-spatial aspects of resilience and urban ecologies, particularly those that address Indigenous cultural methods, regional settlement and community knowledge capacity. His work was exhibited at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. His most recent publications include ‘Knowing through Harakeke’ and ‘Learning Spatial Design through Interdisciplinary Collaboration’. Dr Karen Burns is an architectural historian and theorist and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Her essays have been published in Postcolonial Spaces, Assemblage, The Gothic Revival Worldwide, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century and the Journal of Architectural Education. She is co-editor of the forthcoming The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2015 (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2023). Dr Edson G. Cabalfin, PhD, is an educator, architect, designer, historian and curator. He is inaugural Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, while concurrently serving as the Director of the Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship programme, and Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at Tulane University (New Orleans, Louisiana, USA). He received his PhD in History of Architecture from Cornell University (Ithaca, New York, USA). He was the Curator of the Philippine Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018. Edson’s research in the last two decades has focused on the intersection of architecture history and theory, gender and sexuality studies, Southeast Asian studies, cultural studies, postcolonial theory, public interest design and heritage conservation. Aisea Fanamanu hails from the Tongan villages of Haveluloto (Tongatapu), Pangai (Ha’apai) and ‘Eueiki. He is a civil engineering graduate with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) degree from Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Yves-Béalo Gony is a Kanak anthropologist and customary chief from northeastern mainland New Caledonia. He has successively assumed the positions of curator (department of heritage end ethnographic collections) at the New Caledonia Museum and of ethnologist at the Institute of Archaeology of New Caledonia and the Pacific (IANCP). He is now a project manager for cultural heritage at the Board of Cultural and Customary Affairs for the New Caledonia Government. He is the author of Thewe men jila: la monnaie kanak en Nouvelle-Calédonie (2006), the first detailed study of Kanak traditional currency.

viii Contributors

Carolyn Hill is Lecturer in environmental planning at the University of Waikato and Architectural Practitioner in cultural heritage management and conservation. Her current research explores the views and values of young adults in relation to heritage-making in urban environments. She is the editor of Kia Whakanuia te Whenua: People, Place, Landscape (2021). Professor Jason Ingham is the Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Jason is a world authority in earthquake engineering. He has undergraduate and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Auckland, and a PhD from the University of California at San Diego. Dr Louis Lagarde is a New Caledonian archaeologist. After ten years as operation manager at the Institute of Archaeology of New Caledonia and the Pacific (IANCP), he was appointed senior lecturer at the University of New Caledonia in 2015. His research focuses on the settlement of the Pacific islands, human impact  on  the ecosystems and evolutions in material culture, especially in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. He has also studied New Caledonia’s architectural heritage and has recently edited the encyclopedic volume Le patrimoine de la Nouvelle-Calédonie (2020). Dr Bruno Marques is Associate Dean (Academic Development) at Victoria University of Wellington, Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation and the President of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA). His main research interests are integrating Indigenous methods in participatory design and place-making in landscape rehabilitation for health and well-being. Jacqueline McIntosh is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the Wellington School of Architecture of Victoria University of Wellington. Her current research revolves around investigating therapeutic and rehabilitative built environments. This multidisciplinary and multi-institutional bicultural research focuses on designing the built environment for wellness, including social and cultural inclusion. Professor Paul Memmott Paul Memmott is a trans-disciplinary researcher (architect/anthropologist) and has been the Director of the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (AERC) for some decades at the University of Queensland. Memmott’s field of research encompasses the cross-cultural study of the people-­environment relations of Indigenous peoples with their natural and built environments, including Aboriginal housing and settlement design, Aboriginal access to institutional architecture, Indigenous constructs of place and cultural landscapes, vernacular architecture, Native Title and social planning in Indigenous communities, homelessness and family violence. Memmott has received the Officer of the Order of Australia Award ‘For distinguished service to ethno-architecture and anthropology, to Indigenous housing and cultural heritage, and to tertiary education’. His career has spanned over fifty years. Faye Mendes-Underwood is of Ngāpuhi and Te Rarawa descent. She is a civil engineering graduate with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) degree from Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Dr James Miller is Assistant Professor in Comparative Indigenous Studies and Urban Planning at Western Washington University in the department of Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy. A Kanaka Maoli scholar, architect and urbanist, James’ work centres Indigenous knowledge in building resilient communities through architectural and planning frameworks.

Contributors ix

Dr Joshua Nash is founding editor of Some Islands (https://www.joshuanash.net/someislands) and co-­editor of Australian Journal of Jewish Studies (http://www.aajs.org.au/journal/). Dr Timothy O’Rourke is Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture, University of Queensland, and an architect. His research is broadly concerned with past and present applications of cross-cultural design across different building types and settings. This has required multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of architectural shortcomings, informed by histories of building types and the preferences of people who use them. Tim’s PhD examined a history of Aboriginal building traditions in the Wet Tropics Region of Queensland. Dr Hannah Robertson is an ARC DECRA Research Fellow and Lecturer in Construction Management at the University of Melbourne and an Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash Sustainable Development Institute’s Centre for Water Sensitive Cities. Her research interests include remote area building and participatory design through the facilitation of Traditional Owner-led research. She is currently working in partnership with the Olkola Aboriginal Corporation and the Centre for Appropriate Technology to design and build a Cultural Knowledge Centre on their Country in remote Cape York, Queensland. Amber Ruckes is of Tūhoe descent. She is a current PhD (Architecture) candidate and has a Bachelor of Architectural Studies and Master of Architecture (Professional) with First Class Honours from Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. As a designer at the architectural practices Warren and Mahoney and Jasmax Design Tribe, she has worked on a number of projects with Māori communities. Dr Rosemarie H. Rusch is Senior Teaching Fellow in Construction Management and Quantity Surveying and BIM Unit Coordinator at Bond University, Australia. She holds a PhD in Sustainable Development and Architecture, and Master of Construction Practice from Bond University in Australia. Rosemarie worked extensively in Building Design and Project Development roles throughout North and SE Queensland as principal of her own design practice in Kuranda, North Queensland. Rosemarie’s research interests are primarily concerned with traditional architecture, looked at through an anthropological lens but she is also exploring the use of digital technology in the context of heritage management. Dr Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei is an architect, researcher and educator. She traces her Pacific ancestry to the kāinga of Tatakamōtonga, Houma, Ha’alalo and Pukotala, Ha’apai in the Kingdom of Tonga, and the moana beyond: Samoa, Uvea (Wallis and Futuna) and Fulaga, Lau Islands, Fiji. Charmaine has a wide appreciation of Indigenous and vernacular architectural research and practice. Charmaine works as a consultant and senior architect on government, community, educational, institutional and commercial projects with/and for Pacific, Māori and Aboriginal Indigenous communities in Aotearoa New Zealand, the South and Western Pacific Islands, and Australia. Enabling a symbiotic and transformational relationship between architectural research and architectural practice is a motivation of Charmaine’s work. Charmaine is Senior Architect and Cultural Engagement Lead at Guymer Bailey Architects, Brisbane and Associate Dean Pacific and Senior Lecturer at Waipapa Taumata Rau, The University of Auckland. Dr John Ting teaches in the architecture programme at the University of Canberra, with a PhD from the University of Melbourne and a professional degree in architecture from RMIT University. His present research investigates Sarawak’s architectural history, the vernacular architecture of Malaysia, and mobile

x Contributors

and prefabricated timber buildings in nineteenth-century colonial Southeast Asia and Australia. He is the author of The History of Architecture in Sarawak before Malaysia, published in 2018. Dr Marcel Vellinga is Professor of Anthropology of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. Holding a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Leiden University in the Netherlands, Marcel has extensive research and teaching experience in the fields of cultural anthropology and international vernacular architecture studies. Over the years he has taught and published on a variety of topics including vernacular architecture, the anthropology of architecture, rural architectural regeneration, and tradition and sustainable development. Marcel is the Editor-in-Chief of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, to be published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2024. He is also the Director of the Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme. Dr Paul Walker is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include museum architecture in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and the architectural history of Australia and New Zealand. Walker chairs the editorial board of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand. He is the principal author of John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense (Harvard Design Press, 2022). His work has appeared in Volume, the Journal of Architecture, Fabrications, CLOG and Planning Perspectives. Dr Gabriele Weichart is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Since her PhD in 1997, she worked for several years at the University of Heidelberg and was a visiting scholar and lecturer at various universities in Australia, Indonesia and Europe. She has done extensive research in different regions of Indonesia and Australia and published on Indigenous art, vernacular architecture and food cultures. Her current interests include the commodification of cultural heritage and vernacular architecture and its impact by natural disaster. Dr Ian Woodcock is Senior Lecturer in Urbanism at The University of Sydney, with a professional background in architecture and urban design. His research focuses on understanding historical legacies of and potential futures for urban transformation with a particular focus on issues of place-identity, multiculturalism and mobility. Lizzie Yarina is a doctoral candidate in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, USA. Her current research investigates the spatial politics of climate change adaptation in delta regions with a focus on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Her research on the relationships among design thinking, territorial politics and climate risk has been published in both public scholarship and peer-reviewed venues. She is also co-editor of the forthcoming interdisciplinary volume ‘Building Models, Changing Climates.’

Contributors xi

xii



Introduction



PAUL MEMMOTT AND MARCEL VELLINGA

Australasia and Oceania, broadly defined as comprising the archipelagos of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as New Guinea, Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia (including New Zealand), make up a region of the world that is well-known for its rich vernacular architectural heritage. Much of this vernacular heritage of mainly wooden architectural traditions has shared historical origins that in many instances have been traced back for thousands of years. These shared origins can be recognized in the broad similarities in architectural forms, functions, materials, technologies and spatial organization that have been documented throughout the region (Waterson 19901; Fox 19932; Schefold et al. 20033). The use of wood and other vegetal materials, raised (and often multi-level) floors, saddleback roofs, gable finials, botanic metaphors and open cultural spaces are some examples of architectural elements that can be found in many parts of the region – though not all. The ways in which these and other elements manifest themselves in specific regions are diverse and the result of the complex environmental and cultural history of the region. In time, different peoples and cultures adapted their building traditions to varied natural environments and incorporated new elements as a result of migrations, environmental changes, conflicts, trade or religious conversions, resulting in an extraordinarily rich tapestry of architectural diversity and heritage. The vernacular architecture of Australasia and Oceania has received much scholarly attention from anthropologists, architects and architectural historians. This scholarship in many parts of the region can be traced back to colonial times, and much of it focused on domestic buildings and is of outstanding quality. Initially it was mainly concerned with documentation and rather descriptive in nature, but it became more analytical during the twentieth century, resulting in some key publications that changed the way in which the regional building traditions were perceived and valued. In parallel with the study of vernacular architecture worldwide (Rudofsky 19644; Rapoport 19695; Oliver 19976), some parts of the study region received more attention than others. The focus of research has been diverse and varied as well, and has generally shifted over time, from symbolic studies that emphasized the way houses reflected cultural values and played roles in kinship systems to more recent work that emphasizes the way traditional architectural forms are represented, adapted, appropriated and incorporated into contemporary design. Many analyses in the region have been of a local or regional nature – for example, Lim Jee Yuan’s The Malay House (1987),7 Roger Boulay’s house study of the Kanak peoples in New Caledonia (La Maison Kanak 1990),8 Christian Coiffier’s profiling of traditional architecture in Vanuatu (1988)9 and Martin Fowler’s analysis of Melanesian architectural typology in Papua New Guinea (2002).10 For Indonesia, a range of works has been generated on its regional traditions from across the archipelago (for instance Cunningham 196411; Kis-Jovak et al 198812; Schefold et al. 200313), and the same applies to Māori architecture (e.g. Best 197414; Fox 197615; Brailsford 199716). An outstanding contribution to the corpus of research was Roxana Waterson’s The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (1990),17 encompassing

architectural anthropology in South-East Asia and laying the foundation for James Fox’s edited collection Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living (1993),18 and the body of contributions in Reimar Schefold, Peter Nas and Gaudenz Domenig’s Indonesian Houses (2003).19 Then followed Paul Memmott’s definitive work on Australian Aboriginal architecture, Gunyah Goondie + Wurley (2007, 2022),20 Deidre Brown’s classic Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharanui and Beyond (2009)21 and her subsequent broadening of the field to other Pasifika architecture including stone constructions (Brunt and Thomas 2012),22 and Paul Sillitoe’s Built in Niugini: Construction in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (2017).23 More recently, edited collections have begun to appear that bring together authors from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and elsewhere in the Pacific, including invited contributions by and for Indigenous peoples. One is Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture (Kiddle, Stewart and O’Brien 2018)24; another is The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (Grant et al. 2018),25 and a third, focusing on North America, is New Architecture on Indigenous Lands (Malnar and Vodvarka 2013).26 These three books have compiled a huge resource of writings on the multiple ways of defining and understanding Indigenous architecture, urban planning and design, and how practitioners are applying such learnings, as well as the critical debates surrounding them. The powerful voices of many Indigenous practitioners and scholars can be heard asserting their agency in this field. Internationally diverse collections of exemplars of Indigenous architecture are also to be found in Assembling the Centre: Architecture for Indigenous Cultures  – Australia and Beyond by Janet McGaw and Anoma Pieris (2015),27 and in Julia Watson’s Lo – TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism (2019).28 Recent decades have seen rapid and fundamental social, economic and environmental changes in the region that have altered the status of this rich vernacular architectural heritage. In the twenty-first century, in most parts of Australasia and Oceania vernacular architecture no longer makes up the contemporary architectural landscape. Many vernacular buildings have been complemented, overtaken or replaced by new forms of architecture that consist of different designs, materials and layouts and that accommodate new ways of living. These changes are the result of the combined effects of processes of population growth, urbanization, globalization and modernity, and are sometimes reinforced by the impacts of climate change, (forced) migration, natural disasters or conflict. Of course, such changes are not unique to the region, and take place all around the world, in different configurations and at different speeds. The fundamental changes that can be observed in relation to the vernacular architectural heritage of the region require new perspectives on its design, use and meaning and on the way in which it relates to contemporary architectural design practice. Some of these new perspectives have begun to emerge in recent years. A first change in perspective regards the acknowledgement that vernacular architecture should not be defined in direct opposition to other forms of architecture (as somehow more natural, or authentic, or static and unchanging), but should be seen as dynamic traditions that continue to evolve as environmental and cultural contexts change. A second change is that the transformations that are observed are not solely to be seen as caused by impersonal, hegemonic and imposed processes like modernity or globalization, but in fact involve processes of human intentions, decisions and agency – and thus, to a large extent at least, are desired and intended by the owners, builders and inhabitants of the architecture. Thirdly, new ideas about the relationship between design, making and dwelling, and about the role of skill, creativity, individuality and Artificial Intelligence in those processes, have begun to challenge distinctions such as those between design and making, and between architect and builder, that underlie the concept of vernacular architecture (Vellinga 2019).29 Rapid political, economic, technological, social and environmental changes have thus transformed vernacular architecture in Australasia and Oceania, and the ways in which it is perceived and understood.

2 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

The region’s architecture has been affected by increasing globalization, characterized by increasingly permeable national boundaries, exchanges of people, finance, material culture and digital technologies. Design and the Vernacular seeks to understand how the cultural changes brought about by these processes and developments impact on vernacular architectures. The chapters all address one or more of the following themes: • How have multidisciplinary research methods and design practices expanded the conceptualization and analysis of vernacular architecture and settlements? How, for example, may a combination of Indigenous research and design practices that draw on culturally specific knowledge and understandings complement more conventional approaches and provide new insights into vernacular traditions? Or, what is (or has been) the effect of labour, knowledge and financial flows across the region on vernacular architecture? • How and why has vernacular architecture been used to bridge the distance between local cultures and influences of modernity? For example, in responding to cultures, how have building traditions shaped modern building practices in the region, and what is their legacy? And what is the role of the technological developments of traditional knowledge in conserving, safeguarding and reviving existing traditions? • How have vernacular architecture and settlements been used to argue for postcolonial modernization and nation-building and what has been the effect on heritage and conservation? For example, what is the relationship between modern aspirational vernacular architecture and settlements in the region and established cultural heritage traditions? And, what is sustainability’s role in the context of the use of increasingly scarce vernacular architectural materials for middle-class, tourism and state building types in the region? The chapters reflect and explore one or several of these themes in different parts of Australasia and Oceania, across either the colonial, postcolonial or contemporary periods, with the aim of expanding and broadening conventional understandings of vernacular architecture in the region. However, they are also relevant to the many other parts of the world where architectural hybridization, cultural change processes and forms of local and national identity maintenance are widespread.

The ancient immigrations to the region, and associated cultural and settlement adaptations At a macro-scale of many millennia, the immense diversification of house types and building technologies in Australasia and Oceania can be theorized to be the result of three migratory movements that saw people adapt to a multitude of isolated settings of differing environments and resources. It is relevant to briefly model this deep history and its processes of migration and cultural evolution, since one question for contemporary scholars of vernacular architecture is how certain common elements continue to persist in the houses and settlements of many culturally diverse contemporary groups? The nature of the colonizing populations continues to be the research subject of trans-disciplinary teams, and the broad models of ancient migratory waves continue to be examined and refined. The first incoming wave was the movement of peoples starting prior to 65,000BP at the time of the Ice Age, when sea levels were much lower. At this time the region was divided between the landmass of the south-eastern Eurasian continent that incorporated the (now) islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and Borneo (this land being now termed ‘Sunda’), and the separate continent (now termed ‘Sahul’) that incorporated New Guinea, Australia

Introduction 3

and Tasmania (see Figure I.1). The inter-visibility of islands in the intermediate straits facilitated crossing by island hopping from west to east between these two continents with basic watercraft, and resulted in the diffusion of colonizing Indigenous fisher and hunter-gatherer groups.30 These ‘ancient “boat people” took their legends and concepts of religion, astronomy, magic, and social hierarchy with them wherever they went’.31 Although many of the descendant groups of this original migratory wave adapted their economies to become agriculturalists, fishers and so on, a good proportion, especially those who travelled up rivers into upland forested habitats, maintained their hunter-gatherer economies, especially in the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Australia, West Indonesia and the Philippines. The dwellings of these groups were relatively quickly made with lightweight frames, leaf thatching and on-ground or low-set platforms. As they settled in new lands, many of the new settler groups developed hybrid economies, combining semi-sedentary lifestyles utilizing villages or hamlets (starting as base camps), carrying out swidden or paddy cultivation, but still

Fig. I.1  Map showing Sundaland, Wallacea, Sahul, two alternate migration routes across Wallacea, and ancient dated archaeological sites of significance. (Map reproduced with permission from from CartoGIS Services, Scholarly Information Services, The Australian National University.)

4 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

supplementing these foods by deploying an outer hunter-gatherer range for forest foods as well as forms of aboriculture, supported by temporary foraging camps.32 Their dwellings were often more substantial with high platform floors and several rooms. In some cases, their villages were moved between several sites for shifting cultivation. A widespread hunter-gatherer shelter type still found in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and the Philippines, as well as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, was the lean-to leaf-shield with sitting/sleeping platform. The leaf-shield is a rectangular frame within which there is interwoven thatching. Once manufactured, the shield is leant against a ridge pole on two forked posts. At ground level, a sitting and sleeping platform of saplings is supported on a substructure at about 30 cm above ground level. Hearths are burnt on several sides if necessary for warmth and insect repulsion. In more inclement weather, the ridge pole can carry a shield on both sides to make a more enclosed triangular prism form. This shelter type has evolved to suit ­hunting-gathering bands who are only camping at a place for one or a few nights, but who usually have more permanent base camps. The exposed nature of the shelters and their close proximity in camps reflects the different and distinct cultural construct of privacy of hunter-gathers, as well as the moral social relations that involve the sharing of resources.33 The second wave of ancient migration in the study region was facilitated by sophisticated watercraft, some millennia after the sea levels rose at the end of the Holocene, and is termed the Austronesian migration. It occurred during 5000BP to 1500BP, starting (according to the currently dominant paradigm) from Taiwan and driven by a migratory pulse with the invention of the single-hulled outrigger canoe; followed by a second eastward pulse, driven by the invention of the double-hulled outrigger canoe, to the region’s extremities within the ‘Polynesian Triangle’ of the Pacific Ocean.34 Navigation across the vast Pacific was based on knowledge of astronomy, climate, ocean currents and ecologies aided by basic shell maps. Seafaring culture and reference to boat technology within house architecture are recurring themes in the various Austronesian architectural creations (see Figure I.2).

Fig. I.2  The dispersals of Austronesian-speaking population according to linguistic directionality and archaeological chronology. (Reproduced from Bellwood, P. 2022 The Five-Million-Year-Odyssey: The Human Journey from Ape to Agriculture. Princeton: Princeton University Press with permission.)

Introduction 5

The elements of the Austronesian dwelling have been most convincingly analysed in the western part of the region35 and can be elicited as follows: (i) vertically divided tripartite house: underneath house – the nether world of the lower divinities; the house floor level – the human domain; the roof space – sacred domain; (ii) the multi-levelled floor: built on timber posts or stilts; (iii) the outward-slanting gable; (iv) outward-slanting walls; (v) the saddle-backed roof; (vi) gable finials or other roof ornaments; (vii) differential treatment of root end of post always at base with tip end to the top [certain posts are ‘ritual attractors’]; and (viii) orientation and spatial coordination within a cosmological belief system.36 However, as the migrations progressed eastwards, these house elements were not so clearly evident in recurring patterns. Nevertheless, in addition to Austronesianderived languages, an agricultural heritage, advanced maritime technology and a unique material culture (characterized predominantly by their incised and dentate stamped pottery), the eastward migration of the Austronesians (or ‘Lapita’ peoples) is considered to have brought unique settlement patterns characterized by reef and coastal houses often built on piles, occasional relatively inland ‘fortified’ sites, and larger hamlet and village-sized settlements. Interaction between descendants of hunter-gatherer groups and the later Austronesian immigrants with metal tools appears to have resulted in the longhouse tradition that diffused and was adapted throughout Borneo and elsewhere. A common feature of the Pacific Island cultures was the construction in their settlements of a cultural space or malae (and other cognates) ‘for oratorial and ceremonial open-air forums as raised stone platforms or cleared ground’. This space, articulated by surrounding architectural elements, was considered ‘as important and tapu (sacred) as the elements themselves’.37 The Austronesians also brought stone architectural technologies which manifest in a number of case studies (aptly summarized by Brown 2019). Most notable is the Micronesian settlement of Nan Madol on the coast and off-shore of Pohnpei Island. Here some ninety artificial islets were constructed of megalithic stone, c.1400–1700, supporting ‘basalt-built houses and tombs, and connected by a series of channels’. The basalt was brought on rafts and manoeuvred into place with ropes and pulleys.38 Significant examples of marae incorporating stone structures such as walls and platforms include the Taputapuatea Marae on Ra’iatea Island in the Society Islands (c.1250), which became dedicated to ‘Oro, the supreme god of earth and air. Other marae in the outer part of Polynesia are the Atooi heiau of the Waimea River, Hawaii, possibly dedicated to Ku, the god of war; and the Ahu Tongariki of Rapanui (Easter Island) with its row of moai head statues (up to 9 m high) on a 220 m long elevated stone terrace (c.1300– 1500).39 The marae with its “central community forecourt and forum space has been a persistent and unifying spatial feature” of Pasifika communities throughout the last millennium’.40 The evolution of the marae space is not confined to Polynesia but also extends to Melanesia. For example, the central alley of Kanak hamlets in New Caledonia is a parallel to the Polynesian marae, a sociopolitical meeting space with the conical house of the chief at one end, lined on the sides with tall Araucaria columnaris pines, and sometimes with the house of ‘next-bloodline’ chiefs at the opposite end which had the role of hosting and linking important visitors to the chief.41 The third set of migratory influences dates to the historical period of the last two millennia. Parts of Malaysia, Borneo, modern-day Indonesia and the Philippines came into contact with Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist cultures from at least the seventh century AD onwards. For centuries, a succession of Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim kingdoms existed in the region and competed with one another for territory, resources and influence. Stabilization occurred during the period of the Majapahit Empire (1293–c.1527), an Indianized kingdom centred in eastern Java, and dominating the Malay Peninsula and Philippines. Cash economy was introduced based on rice cultivation and trade. The Majapahit architects mastered the use of brick in temples where Buddhism, Shaivism and Vaishnavism were practised. From the early modern period, and mainly from the 1700s and 1800s onwards, the colonizing nations of Europe, namely Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France and Germany all brought architectural

6 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

influences on local forms of vernacular throughout Australasia and Oceania, as did the immigrant groups whom they allowed to enter their new colonies (e.g. Chinese, Arabs, Indians). Port cities evolved first, facilitating the influx of Chinese, Islamic and European ideas accompanied by architectural syncretism when fused with local traditions in the construction of palaces, temples, shops, forts and gardens.42 The new influences slowly but steadily spread to inland regions, resulting in the introduction of new settlement forms (plantations, cattle stations), building types (churches, bungalows), materials (brick, concrete) and technologies (masonry, prefab housing). In many parts of the region, spatial patterns, uses and meanings changed too, as, for example, traditional multi-family housing arrangements were replaced with single-family homes or fireplaces were moved outside to accommodate colonial ideas of privacy, morality and hygiene. Such new ideas and forms sometimes combined in creative ways with already existing building traditions; for example, the Micronesians employed European traditions to develop their own megalithic stone construction methods and achievements,43 while the early dwellings of British colonists in New Zealand incorporated some Māori technologies. In other instances, they led to the fundamental transformation or even replacement of entire vernacular traditions. The impacts of colonial and subsequent postcolonial contexts continue to be seen in vernacular architecture throughout the region. In recent decades, however, globalization, population growth, urbanization, technological change, natural disasters and climate change have taken the place of large-scale migration movements, religious diffusion and imperialist or colonial projects as the main drivers of cultural and architectural change and transformation. Although different in nature, these processes are not unrelated to the former, however, and have in fact evolved from them. They have similar profound impacts on vernacular architectural landscapes and continue to contribute to the extraordinarily rich, complex, varied and dynamic history of vernacular architectural diversity in Southeast Asia and Oceania. To understand these impacts within the context of the rich historical and regional diversity of the region is what the contributors to Design and the Vernacular set out to do. We now turn to a more in-depth summary of the book’s chapters and the logic of their organization and ordering which unfolds in four parts, each of which addresses a research and/or architectural practice question.

Design practice and research methods in applying the vernacular to contemporary contexts The first four chapters of this book address the question, ‘how have multidisciplinary design practices and research methods expanded the conceptualization and analysis of vernacular architecture and settlements?’ The first chapter by ‘Ilaiū Talei examines practising aid architecture in the Pacific and focuses on the design process and engagement with Indigenous clients. Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei is a Tongan architect and scholar whose practice experience during the 2010s was in architectural design and procurement projects for small Pacific Island nations that rely mainly on international aid funding agencies. Her earlier research interests include ethno-architectural knowledge embodied in traditional Pasifika technologies and the adaptation of such to global modernization influences. In her chapter, she describes the variable project edicts of different international aid schemes and explains how particular edicts or policy requirements with respect to design concepts, materials and labour on projects can have either positive or negative impacts on addressing the process and product outcomes, and on the (tangible and intangible) cultural and vernacular goals of the local Indigenous clients. She also deals with culturally appropriate consultation styles as part of design process methods, drawing on particular Pasifika project examples in which she has been involved. ‘Ilaiū Talei employs a personalized direct reflexive writing style as an Indigenous expert project architect.

Introduction 7

Her analysis emphasizes the vernacularization of project delivery by the clients in architectural aid contexts and the ‘slippages’ that take place due to differences of cross-cultural values and goals between the local Indigenous participants and the overseas professionals. However, this vernacularization is often within the process rather than the product, including meeting, communication and decision-making styles. The discordances may include the foreign architectural attempts to provide local place and cultural references, versus the Pasifika ‘aspirations for progressive and internationally looking architecture’. She takes her construct of ‘slippage’ from Homi Bhabha and implies that the gestures of Western architecture often appropriate native traditions inappropriately. Overall the chapter points to bettering both co-design and co-procurement in achieving culturally sustainable project outcomes. The second chapter by Savannah Brown et al. is titled ‘Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui: A Genealogy of Māori Meeting Houses’ and also examines the client consultation process and its contemporary best practice goals in New Zealand. The British colonization of Aotearoa (New Zealand) involved Māori resistance and consequently a treaty aiming to protect a set of Māori rights. Nevertheless the treaty was not respected by the British in many ways, but despite severe subsequent impacts on Māori culture, strong retention of many customary practices and material culture items has persisted. Foremost is the recurrence of the marae, a courtyard with a complex of buildings that are the cultural centres for local groups.44 Each tribe or iwi usually has one, but metropolitan marae have more recently evolved to serve Māori of mixed tribal origins who have migrated to cities.45 This chapter is written by a multidisciplinary team of six predominantly Māori engineers and architects and draws on a research project to survey nationwide, the most significant buildings on each New Zealand marae, the wharenui or community meeting house that maintains the connectivity and identity of the local group. The classical wharenui contains wooden sculptures of the ascendant ancestors of the iwi back to the arrival of the first ancestral canoes from the eastern Pacific (c.1250 AD), and thus is a complex genealogical statement of group descent. Hence the aim of the project, drawing on this central cultural construct, is to compile a whakapapa (genealogy) database of some 800 wharenui and their architectural, structural and cultural attributes to be used ‘to identify wharenui seismic resilience’ and propose a set of cost-effective national ‘type-specific solutions to potential seismic issues’. The outcome is expected to be future retrofitting of wharenui in different ways for the seismic protection of these vernacular architectural cultural heritage assets. The chapter reports on the design of the critical Indigenous research methodology,46 being a combination of Māori research practices, which on the one hand draws on the culturally specific knowledge of volcanic and seismic phenomena as well as deep cultural understandings of wharenui ritual and behaviours, and on the other, on Western engineering and architectural practice theory. The project is ‘considered central to the continued maintenance and development of Māori architecture’ given the changing national building laws after the disastrous 2011 Christchurch earthquakes. The chapter analysis, however, focuses on the Māori epistemological principles underlying the innovative culturally specific research methodology and some of the ethical disparities that arose in dealing with a conventional University ethics committee, as well as referencing the disruptive impacts of Covid-19 on the project. The third chapter by McIntosh and Marques, ‘“Tropical Architecture”: Cultural Collisions and Reverberations in the Vernacular of Aotearoa New Zealand’, although broadly focused on New Zealand, is also dealing with diasporic Pasifika groups who have, and continue to re-settle there. It examines a set of migrations to Aotearoa or New Zealand and the housing adjustments that these waves of immigrants made. The first colonizers were the Pasifika people who began arriving in the thirteenth century AD (and who now identify as Māori) and who adapted a Pasifika settlement solution consisting of decentralized structures for different domiciliary functions including a sleeping building (wharepuni). The second wave of colonizers were the British in the early 1800s, who appropriated the well-insulated Māori sleeping building

8 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

as an interim solution, but because they used it for all domiciliary functions (not just sleeping), a design mismatch occurred. By the 1870s a new timber vernacular house had been developed by these colonial settlers and in the twentieth century government rental housing evolved, arguably another type of vernacular, in particular, semi-detached housing. The third migration comprised new Pasifika peoples starting post-Second World War. With the advent of national economic hardships, the semi-detached government house became a mismatch for both large Pasifika and Māori households. The series of migratory occupations highlights the recurring ‘reverberations’ between the cultures of newcomers and the pre-existing built vernaculars, often stressful, whereby either cultures must adapt to the new housing or the prevailing housing must be adapted to suit the incoming culture. The last parts of the chapter describe contemporary design practice efforts by Indigenous architects to shape new forms of housing that reflect the traditional Pacific village constructs and values of socialized living in large households. Finally, the linguist Nash, in his exploratory chapter ‘Linguistics and Architecture, Creolistics and History, or, Is Norfolk Island Architecture (a) Creole?’, challenges architectural research practitioners to take a more transdisciplinary approach in understanding the nature of cultural change by including linguistic analysis in their studies. Nash offers a provocative methodologically orientated chapter whose context lies with the migration and adaptation of the descendants of the mutiny of the Bounty, the Pitcairn Islanders and their Polynesian wives and offspring, some 190 people, who moved to Norfolk Island, a former Australian penal settlement, in 1856. They brought a pidgin language from their remote isolated Pacific villages, which was labelled as ‘Pitcairn’, which underwent a creolization on Norfolk to become another adapted linguistic form, now known as ‘Norfolk’, and which today has about 300 speakers. Nash develops an exploratory argument that, parallel to the process of language change, there was an architectural change to the design of the Islanders’ residences which synthesized from both their Pitcairn houses of Polynesian influence, and the colonial Georgian architecture that they encountered on Norfolk Island at the time of their arrival. Nash applies a theoretical linguistic framework of creolization (or ‘creolistics’) to compare the parallel linguistic and architectural processes of cultural change on Norfolk Island, which he implies were interconnected. He offers this methodological approach as a prospective inter-disciplinary analytic proposition for future scholars of architectural history to explore.

Bridging between local cultures and influences of modernity The second tranche of five chapters in this book addresses the question, ‘how and why has vernacular architecture been used to bridge the distance between local cultures and influences of modernity?’ These chapters are of relevance to both architectural research and practice. Most of the chapters contain some sort of a call for support from the design professions and governments for culturally and environmentally sustainable architectural and environmental approaches for their study groups. They start with Weichart’s chapter which is titled ‘Is Vernacular the New Modern? Reflections on Movements, Changes and Preservation in Indonesia’. The central argument in this chapter on architectural change and preservation in Indonesia is that Javanese high-class architecture constitutes a vernacular cultural tradition that is still practised and preserved in today’s Indonesia, albeit in new forms that have adapted to changing socio-economic and political contexts. The chapter examines how vernacular forms of architecture like the Javanese joggle and limasan houses have been used and instrumentalized (alongside other cultural traditions such as batik, gamelan and dance), by both individuals and groups to achieve a variety of goals. This process has involved the ‘vernacularization’ of Javanese ‘high culture’, which is now more widely accessible, and especially popular among the highly educated Muslim middle classes who

Introduction 9

have emerged in the last few decades. As a result, defining the vernacular, and distinguishing the traditional from the professional, is not easy; it is, in Weichart’s words, a combination of ‘changes and exchanges, stability and movements’. Traditional wooden joggle and limasan houses, or parts thereof, which in the past were restricted to aristocratic classes, are today widely sold, traded, renovated and reused, both within Indonesia and internationally, turning them from status objects into commercial commodities. The result is a ‘semi-vernacular’ of endless variation that is used and promoted by various organizations as cultural heritage, and its conservation is part of a strategy to foster national development. In the process, Javanese high-culture has become more accessible to large parts of Javanese society, while a distinction between vernacular and modernity is more difficult to make for scholars of ‘tradition’. O’Rourke, in his chapter titled ‘Adaptive Uses of Traditional Windbreaks and Bough Shades for Indigenous Housing in Australia’, focuses on a postcolonial period, starting in the 1970s and 1980s in Aboriginal Australia, when a handful of progressive architects were designing for client groups living in semi-sedentary camps and were recognizing the need to modify the conventional housing that was just beginning to be provided for Aboriginal people, to suit their adapting traditional domiciliary lifestyles. O’Rourke traces the use of two of the traditional lightweight shelter types which were used for millennia across the continent, despite the regional variation in more substantial enclosed house types. The windbreak and the shade shelter types were readily constructed by the residents, although the materials were transforming during the colonial era with bark sheets and foliage being replaced by galvanized iron sheets, steel fence posts and jointing technologies derived from wire fencing technologies. Nevertheless, these basic types, albeit with modified materials and jointing methods, were observed to persist into the new housing era, as self-­constructed additions, not only in the fringe camps of humpies (small, temporary shelters) on the outskirts of towns, and on self-constructed outstations, but also in the yards of government provided housing on town lots. The latter represented a process of adapting externally oriented lifestyles and hearth-based cooking practices to the era of the rental housing provision by government and NGO social housing agencies. Architects in this era, involved in seeking culturally appropriate design of housing for Aboriginal people, learnt from these informal expressions of tradition, and experimented in incorporating them into their house designs to support Indigenous social behaviours, employing participatory planning approaches. O’Rourke notes that both the informal adaptations by residents and the formal designs by progressive architects have continued into the twenty-first century, and indicate a need for a wider recognition and understanding of these ancient architectural types as ongoing templates for appropriate design in the national policy and professional environments. Robertson’s chapter titled ‘Building on Indigenous homelands in Arnhem Land since the 1980s: Harnessing appropriate technologies and partnerships as a new procurement vernacular’, focuses on a new and distinct set of vernacular building approaches that have emerged in some of Australia’s smallest and most remote Indigenous settlements, known as ‘outstations’. These homeland settlements range from campsites to villages of over 100 people, and were established in the late twentieth century as people moved back to their traditional homelands after a long period of forced assimilation into concentrated sedentary settlements. In combination with a desire by Indigenous peoples to connect or reconnect with their Country, a lack of government support for outstation development on homelands has resulted in a range of community-driven approaches that, Robertson argues, collectively form a new vernacular. Robertson identifies and discusses three different types of procurement approach: community-driven approaches with external partners, community-driven approaches led by community corporations and organized self-help approaches. Using various examples, she shows how those approaches have resulted in architectural outcomes that, when viewed as a system of processes and modes of organization, show some clear continuation with Indigenous vernacular traditions. In terms of form and use of materials, the buildings may not be traditional, but all involve community input and are cost-effective. Instead of traditional technologies,

10 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

they have used appropriate technologies for the geographic and economic circumstances – a change that has strengthened the initiatives. The result is a new homeland vernacular that has emerged due to conditions of austerity. This vernacular makes living on homeland outstations possible within the homeland settlement policy and environmental constraints, supports sustainable livelihoods and enables the continuation of traditional cultural practices. Robertson ends the chapter with a plea for such c ­ ommunity-driven homeland building approaches to be enabled and supported. The next chapter in this tranche is by Miller and is titled ‘The Resurgence of Indigenous Knowledge in Adapting Vernaculars: Implications of Climate Change for Rimajol Architectural Traditions’. The United States utilized the Marshall Islands for intensive nuclear bomb testing during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and has since gradually colonized its Indigenous peoples. Town planning and architecture, as well as engineered responses to counter the impact of climate change on the environment, have largely followed Western paradigms involving the privatization and capitalization of property, and have supplanted traditional communal settlement patterns. The Indigenous Rimajol people of the islands have consequently undergone pronounced cultural changes in their life circumstances, but nevertheless various customary practices have been maintained. So much so, that in this chapter, the author, James Miller (a scholar of Indigenous Hawaiian descent), posits an argument that the traditional Rimajol designed and engineered responses to climate change are more culturally appropriate and climate sensitive. He argues the case for the decolonization of the neoliberal Americentric agenda of development, which he asserts is not practically or culturally sustainable for the island peoples. He builds the argument that natural hazards, especially tempest and sea floods, were at the basis of the long evolution of the culture-environment relations of the Rimajol and that their traditional settlement responses involving shoreline house siting need to be not only understood and appreciated, but re-vitalized due to their inherent resilience, responsiveness and suitability to local village practices. He shows that despite the new Western technologies and materials, Rimajol persist in utilizing and adapting customary techniques. Another response aspect of tradition was to rely on the Indigenous familial relationality of island peoples and to seek refuge with other networked island groups after an environmental disaster. These findings lead to a broader call for reform in the ethics of the professional practice of design methodology, whereby Indigenous people should be engaged early into the design and planning processes, which need to respect and utilize Indigenous Traditional Knowledge. Finally, Rusch et  al. in their ‘Papua New Guinea’s Vernacular Architecture, from Relics to Reframing Culture: Kunguma and Tubusereia’ chapter provide an ethnographic study of two small settlements in Papua New Guinea (Kunguma and Tubusereia), based on fieldwork executed in 2016–17. The case studies are categorized as ‘informal settlements’, meaning their construction and tenuring processes are decided through the customary governance systems of the local traditional owners without any intervention from government statutes or authorities. One village is located in the remote highlands region and still employing customary technologies to some extent, while the other is of a contrasting ethno-architectural character, a pile-based village over the sea, not far from the influences of the capital Port Moresby. Both villages are undergoing material culture and other socio-economic changes in the face of modernist twenty-first century influences, yet the authors argue that despite the introduction of new materials, technologies and economies, as well as migratory and circular mobility patterns to the capital, the old social functions, kinship values and socio-spatial emplacement of houses in the village cultural landscapes are being maintained along traditional principles. Nevertheless these tensions shape and constrain how modern identity is expressed and maintained in the respective village contexts, as well as offering theoretical contributions to the understanding of ‘tradition’. This chapter therefore offers an interesting comparison to other case study chapters in diverse parts of our study region, some of which are to be found in the next offering of chapters.

Introduction 11

Bridging for diasporic peoples The third set of some four chapters in this book address the research question, ‘how has bridging the distance between local cultures and influences of modernity been achieved by diaspora peoples?’ The first of these chapters, ‘Archipelagic Views: Vernacular Transformation and Intra-Colonial Agricultural Trade Networks in the Late Nineteenth-Century Asia Pacific’, by Achmadi et  al., places a lens on the ­similar-styled managers’ houses of colonial plantation estates in Eastern Sumatra, New Guinea and North Queensland. As a first year architecture student at the University of Queensland in 1967, one of us editors (Memmott) was taught that the ubiquitous Queensland timber vernacular house (‘the Queenslander’) had evolved as a pure vernacular form unique to our State. This false position can now be attributed to the limited provenance of archival records and siloed ethnographic architectural research of that time. Over the subsequent decades, the origin models have been gradually reformed and refined as different scholars have speculated and investigated different external colonial and global influences. Achmadi et al. build a strong empirical case to deepen this analysis, arguing that the late nineteenth-century establishment of sugar, copra and tobacco plantation estates by shipping and trading companies throughout the Australasian archipelago, and the inter-colonial movements of the plantation managers and the Indigenous workers with them, facilitated a regional network of back-and-forth influences between different colonial contexts. These influences drew on the respective home village technologies of the Indigenous workers’ residences as well as the managers’ concepts of ideal countryside villas. This analysis provides a revised exploratory model of the regional ‘multicultural cross-cultural contacts, exchanges, and cultural absorptions’ in the colonial design of timber houses in parts of Australasia. The chapter employs a historical methodology in which period photographs of planters’ houses are analysed against communications networks, migrant labour flows and the timber construction craftsmanship of the workers, setting up a valuable framework for future research. The theme of back-and-forth influences by tradesmen in the Australasian region recurs in the next chapter by Ting, titled ‘Hand in Hand with Crossed Top Plates: Mapping the Contribution of Chinese Carpenters to the Production and Installation of Melbourne’s Prefabricated “Singapore Cottages”.’ The theme of travelling and migrating Chinese carpenters is a key theme in Ting’s chapter, as he outlines the historical research which led to the discovery of five timber ‘Singapore cottages’ in Australia, which underwent renovations on different sites and were believed to be a sample of a larger number cottages that were imported from Singapore during Victoria’s wealthy gold rush era of the mid-nineteenth century. The distinctive scarfed carpentry joints provided a signature which allowed Ting to trace the spread of this technology in different building types, to both Sarawak and Singapore as well as Melbourne, from probably Penang, and possibly originally from China. The carpenters prefabricated their contracted buildings and then accompanied them to supervise erection. The chapter has parallels to that by Achmadi et  al. in that it examines a regional dispersion of a technology by travelling contracted artisans, driven by colonial economic expansions across the study region. The chapter finishes with theoretical discussion on the adaptation of vernacular technologies to contemporaneous design demands via prefabrication processes, thereby making a contribution to the theorization of the ‘vernacular’ construct. In turn, the next contribution by Beynon and Woodcock on ‘Diasporic Vernaculars? Different Australian Commercial Precincts’ examines the retail shops and restaurants of immigrant Asian and Middle Eastern communities in three Australian metropolitan commercial and touristic settings. These groups have not re-created new buildings utilizing their homeland traditions as such, but adapted pre-existing generic building stock as ‘found’ spaces which are then passed down through their descendants over years. Beynon and Woodcock’s theoretical stance is that distinctive vernacular architectures can be created through the

12 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

overlaying of temporary structures, culturally distinctive artefacts, decorations, signage, ephemera, ethnic practices of service and display, spatial behaviours and shared symbolic meaning systems. When a number of traders with affiliated ethnicities (comprising multiple diasporas) adapt a street in this manner, a territorial precinct with a popular identity, recurring pedestrian and visitation flows, annual festivals, street parties and the like, can be gradually created and evolve over a number of generations. Such a setting provides a sense of identity for the resident and incoming members of these cultural groups but simultaneously generates an exotic environment of commerce and tourism for the wider Australian population. The chapter’s three case studies are modelled as being in different stages of evolution and transformation, with the most recently arrived diaspora being a marginalized community shaping decayed infrastructure (Launceston’s Bhutanese and Nepalese in the suburb of Mowbray), whilst the oldest multi-generational diaspora (Melbourne’s Vietnamese in Richmond), becoming so established that they are reified by local government authorities as an urban tourist zone replete with the street construction of devices such as street gateways, sculptural assemblies and the like. These zones in turn contribute to a changing sense of Australian multi-culturalism which is now widespread in its metropolises. Beynon and Woodcock posit a dynamic definition of vernacular architecture or more specifically of ‘diasporic vernacularization’, as not so much a manifestation of tradition, but as a succession of ‘multiple modernities’ that continue to be shaped inter-generationally through family lineages, creating and implementing compositional strategies around and over the earlier twentieth-century street buildings in unique responses to the local contexts of cultural maintenance and market opportunism. This analytic stance is of global significance to other diasporic architectures around the world where arguably similar phenomena are occurring. Finally in this tranche, the chapter by Yarina et al.: ‘Translating Spaces: Speculative Landscape Futures for New Climate Diasporas’, is premised on the stress incurred by climate change migrants coming from Pacific islands to metropolitan suburbs in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere, and asks how this stress might be partly redressed through the adaption of cultural knowledges and practices to local circumstances. After a broad theoretical discussion on how Pacific vernacular landscapes can play a part in climate mobilities with particular focus on traditional ecological knowledges and socio-spatial behaviours, the authors conclude with a case study of a speculative, design research, landscape studio, carried out by University students in Wellington with a community of Fijian immigrants. The studio project explored how cultural values could be attached to new places and spaces despite different ecological and sociological contexts to their homelands. The aim was to evaluate how such a design project, employing a multi-scaled mapping technique and propositions for small-scaled landscape interventions, might develop speculative futures for climate migrant communities through the creation of culturally hybrid pieces of landscape embedded with the ‘DNA’ of both Fijian cultural values and existing local cultural contexts. The planning policy relevance of the chapter pertains to the generation of land ownership and management principles in resettlement projects, whilst the design practice relevance emphasizes how landscape architecture (as opposed to built architecture) can contribute to the transmission of the vernacular into a diaspora’s new landscape. The chapter offers a pedagogical template for similar studio projects in Australasian and Pasifika university design curriculum.

The vernacular in postcolonial modernization, politicization and nation-building Finally, our last three chapters each address the question, ‘how have vernacular architectures and settlements been used to argue for postcolonial modernization and nation-building?’, and respectively encompass the Cook Islands, the Philippines and New Caledonia.

Introduction 13

In ‘Historic Church Vernacular in the Cook Islands: Modernization, Conservation and Change’, the author Carolyn Hill introduces her architectural focus as five churches established by the London Missionary Society in the mid to late 1800s in the Cook Islands, each located in the tribal district of one of Raratonga’s constituent customary social divisions who were at times in relations of conflict and alliance. The chapter traces cultural transformations from the early nineteenth-century conversion into Christianity and its syncretistic acculturation. The churches became physical embodiments of ancestral Indigenous identity, with successive generations making modernizations, ‘creolizing’ into new expressions of mana (prestige, authority), through to their more recent role in constructions of unified national identity by means of the practice of church building, counterposed with preferences for locally controlled churchscape preservation and conservation in postcolonial society. Questions of agency (including that of the diaspora) arise in ongoing issues of church heritage management due to complex cross-cultural values and ongoing diversification of social structure. The author advocates for a cultural landscape approach to heritage management in her conclusion. She interestingly makes arguments about the indigenization of the churches in relation to the traditional marae; one of her propositions being that the transformation of the church in the 1800s was into that of a marae, whilst another is the close similarity of these two place-based practices (marae, church) in commodifying postcolonial national identity. In his ‘Appropriating the Native: Shifting Definitions of the Vernacular in Twentieth-Century Philippine Architecture’, Edson Cabalfin compares two periods in the history of twentieth-century Philippines architecture, the American colonial period of the early 1900s and the post-1945 period of newly acquired independence. Each period brought a set of architectural expressions by eminent architects in political favour, who drew on sources of Filipino vernacular architecture to present a national and global statement on Filipino identity. But whereas the earlier colonial American period generally imported modernist expression and then attached references drawn mainly from the Spanish Filipino vernacular, the Independence period architects started with pre-colonial exemplars of the vernacular and then integrated modern functions, materials and technologies. This raises an analytic debate on primary versus secondary elements in the design process. The analysis goes deeper by questioning how architects tend to reify an original and authentic vernacular style as a departure point for design, which denies contemporary scholarly understandings of pre-colonial vernacular and of its own dynamic transformations. Another critical issue is the immense diversity of vernacular styles in the Filipino archipelago and the privileging of one style over the many others for referencing as a national type. What the vernacular is in modern expression thus becomes ‘heterogeneous and polyvalent’; and the production of national architectural expression has variable generators and political conditions and contexts of production, all of which Cabalfin pursues in his critical analysis for a more thorough understanding. The last chapter by Lagarde and Gony is titled ‘From Cultural Symbol to Societal Sign: The Question of the Kanak Traditional House in Present-day New Caledonia’. Arriving in Noumea as a tourist, one cannot help but notice the recurring graphic of a tall conical building. Not only appearing in the airport tourist graphics but on the New Caledonian currency, this iconic Indigenous ethnoarchitectural type has become a national symbol of this overseas territory of the French Republic. Archaeologist and architectural anthropologist Louis Lagarde and Kanak scholar Yves-Beale Gony offer a penetrating analysis of the historical transformation in meaning and status of what once was a tribal chief’s house. Starting with a rich ethnographic account of its construction, function and role in Kanak society as well its positioning at the end of a ceremonial alleyway in the sociospatial layout of Kanak hamlets, the chapter moves on to describe its almost complete destruction and loss during French colonization from 1853 through to the 1930s under policies of mission sanitization, assimilation and modernization. However, a cultural renaissance amongst the Kanak people in the mid-1970s brought a recovery of the construction technology of the chief’s house (or ‘round

14 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

house’) and its elevation as a symbol of cultural revitalization and Indigenous land rights, reaching its most popularized and abstracted expression in the famous Tjibau Cultural Centre designed by acclaimed Italian architect Renzo Piano. The authors analyse how the chief’s house has undergone a process of folklorization within the many different segments of the New Caledonian society (both amongst black and white, and on the main island and in the outer islands), such that it is no longer just a Kanak vernacular type, but one with a widened significance as a national metaphor and popular tourism commodity, with a transformed albeit questionable set of socio-architectural semantics.

Contemporary theorizations of tradition in vernacular architecture Altogether, the chapters to Design and the Vernacular show that the vernacular architectural diversity that has characterized Australasia and Oceania for millennia is still present, but subject to continuous processes of change that are today brought about by globalization, population growth, urbanization, technological change, natural disasters and climate change instead of the large-scale migration movements, religious diffusion and colonial projects of the distant and more recent past. These processes of change are worthy of further study and should encourage us to reconsider our conventional understandings of vernacular architecture, not just in Australasia and Oceania, but more generally around the world, where the same processes influence and alter vernacular landscapes in similar ways. A number of interesting theoretical reflections on the nature of vernacular architectural traditions are offered by the chapters. None of them are new as such, and most are interrelated in one way or another, but all deserve more attention and further research. A first observation with implications for our conventional understanding of vernacular architecture, put forward most clearly by ‘Ilaiū Talei, Robertson, Rusch and Beynon and Woodcock, is that the continuation of vernacular principles and practices is often found in processes of design, making and dwelling rather than in the final material product – a building. A second point, advanced by O’Rourke, Lagarde and Gony, Mendes-Underwood et  al., Robertson, Miller, Allan, and Yarina et  al., regards the importance of understanding local or regional socio-cultural values and how the vernacular or Indigenous knowledge and practices that embody them are, can and arguably should be incorporated into contemporary design practice. A third observation, put forth in the chapters by Ting, Achmadi et al., McIntosh and Marques, and Nash, is that the processes of change that characterize vernacular architecture are not linear or unilateral, but complex and often made up of multiple influences, exchanges and adaptations that are the result of backand-forth movements of various different, and sometimes unexpected actors over time. A fourth reflection, perhaps the one most recognized already, but still worthy of reiteration here, and discussed in the chapters by O’Rourke, Allan, Hill and Cabalfin, is that vernacular architecture, either as product or process, is frequently appropriated in contemporary architectural design, for instance as part of postcolonial nation-building projects, in Indigenous design contexts, or for commercial purposes. Finally, as argued by Weichart, Robertson and Rusch et al., the contemporary environmental, political and economic contexts in which vernacular architecture around the region finds itself challenge conventional distinctions between the vernacular and the modern, and encourage us to think of new conceptualizations of what we mean by vernacular architecture. More reflections on the nature of vernacular architectural traditions in Australasia and Oceania in the twenty-first century can no doubt be identified. One important one to end with here is that the chapters make it clear that the scholarship which has characterized the study of Australasian and Oceanian vernacular architecture for so long is still interdisciplinary and of outstanding quality, and as dynamic, diverse and exciting as the vernacular traditions to which it relates.

Introduction 15

Notes 1. Roxana Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990). 2. James J. Fox (ed.), Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living (Canberra: Australian National University, 1993). 3. Reimar Schefold, Gaudenz Domenig and Peter Nas (eds), Indonesian Houses. Vol 1: Tradition and Transformation in Vernacular Architecture (Leiden, Netherlands: KITLV Press, 2003). 4. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964). 5. Amos Rapoport, House, Form and Culture (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969). 6. Paul Oliver (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 7. Lim Jee Yuan, The Malay House: Rediscovering Malaysia’s Indigenous Shelter System (Kuala Lampur: Institut Masyarakat, 1987). 8. Roger Boulay, La Maison Kanak (Marseille, France: Parentheses, 1990). 9. Christian Coiffier, Traditional Architecture in Vanuatu (Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, 1988). 10. Martin M. Fowler, ‘Five Types of Traditional Melanesian Architecture of Papua New Guinea’, in ADDITIONS to Architectural History: XIXth annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, ed. John MacArthur and Antony Moulis (Brisbane, Australia: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia & New Zealand, 2002). 11. Clark E. Cunningham, ‘Order in the Atoni House’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land – en Volkenkunde 120, no. 1 (1964): 34–68. 12. Jowa Imre Kis-Jovak, Hetty Nooy-Palm, Reimar Schefold and Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Banua Toraja: Changing Patterns in Architecture and Symbolism among the Sa’dan Toraja, Sulawesi Indonesia (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1988). 13. Schefold, Domenig and Nas, Indonesian Houses. Vol 1. 14. Elsdon Best, Māori Storehouses and Kindred Structures: Houses, Platforms, Racks and Pits Used for Storing Foods, etc. (Wellington, New Zealand: A.R. Shearer, Government Printer, 1974). 15. Aileen M. Fox, Prehistoric Māori Fortifications in the North Island of New Zealand (Auckland: Longman Paul, 1976). 16. Barry Brailsford, The Tattooed Land, 2nd Edition (Hamilton, New Zealand: Stoneprint Press, 1997). 17. Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia. 18. Fox, Inside Austronesia Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living. 19. Schefold, Domenig and Nas, Indonesia Houses … 20. Paul Memmott, Gunyah Goondie + Wurley (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2007); Paul Memmott, Gunyah Goondie + Wurley, 2nd Edition (Fisherman’s Bend, Australia: Thames and Hudson, 2022). 21. Deidre Brown, Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond (Auckland: Raupo, 2009). 22. Peter Brunt and Nicholas Thomas (eds), Art in Oceania: A New History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012). 23. Paul Stillitoe, Built in Niugini: Constructions in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2017). 24. Rebecca Kiddle, Luugigyoo Patrick Stewart and Kevin O’Brien, Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture (San Francisco: Oro Editions, 2018). 25. Elizabeth Grant, Kelly Greenop, Daniel J. Glenn and Albert L. Refiti, Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (Singapore: Springer nature, 2018).

16 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

26. J. Malnar and F. Vodvarka, New Architecture on Indigenous Lands (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). 27. Janet McGaw and Anoma Pieris, Assembling the Centre: Architecture for Indigenous Cultures (London: Routledge, 2015). 28. Julia Watson, Lo-Tek: Design by Radical Indigenism (Cologne: Taschen, 2019). 29. M. Vellinga, ‘Living Architecture: Re-imagining Vernacularity in Southeast Asia and Oceania’, Fabrications 30, no. 1 (2020): 11–24. 30. P. Bellwood, G. Chambers, M. Ross and H. Hung, ‘Are “Cultures” Inherited? Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Origins and Migrations of Austronesian-Speaking Peoples Prior to 1000 BC, in Investigating Archaeological Cultures: Material Culture, Variability, and Transmission, ed. Benjemin W. Roberts and Marc Vander Linden (New York: Springer), 321–54; S. Kealy, J. Lous and S. O’Connor, ‘Reconstructing Palaeography and Inter-island Visibility in the Wallacean Archipelago During the Likely Period of Sahul Colonization, 65–45 000 Years Ago’, Archaeological Prospection 24 (2017): 259–72; S. O’Connor and P. Hiscock, ‘The Peopling of Sahul and Near Oceania’, in The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania, ed. Terry L. Hunt and Ethan E. Cochrane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 26, 34. 31. Oppenheimer in J. E. Terrell, ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ [Book review of Stephen Oppenheimer’s ‘Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia’ London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998] Current Anthropology 40, no. 4 (2016): 556. 32. D. K. Latinis, ‘The Development of Subsistence System Models for Island Southeast Asia and Near Oceania: The Nature and Role of Arboriculture and Arboreal-based Economies’, World Archaeology 32, no. 1 (2000): 41–67. 33. N. Porath, ‘Semang Hunter-Gatherer Lean-to’, in Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, ed. Marcel Vellinga 2024, Edition 2: 2.II.4.h-I [in press]. 34. R. Blust, ‘The Austronesian Homeland and Dispersal’, Annual Review of Linguistics 5 (2019): 417–34. 35. Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia. 36. Fox, Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living, 23. 37. Brown, Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond, 12. 38. Brown, Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond, 9, 10. 39. Brown, Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond, 9–15. 40. Brown, Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond, 15. 41. See Chapter 16 42. John N. Miksic, Paul Memmott and Deidre Brown, ‘Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, 1400–1780’, in Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture, ed. Murray Fraser (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018), 406–22. 43. Brown, Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond. 44. M. Austin, ‘Watery Ground: Island Architecture’, in On What Ground(s)?: Conference Proceedings of Society of Architectural Historian of Australia and New Zealand, ed. Sean Pickersgill and Peter Scriver (hereafter On What Ground(s)? 1997) (Adelaide: SAHANZ, 1997), 9–14. 45. Paul Memmott and James Davidson, ‘Indigenous Culture and Architecture in the South Pacific Region: 25 Years of SAHANZ Research’, Fabrications 18, no. 1, June: 74–117. 46. After N. Denzin, Y. Lincoln and L. Smith, The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (California: Sage Publications, 2008).

Introduction 17

18

Part 1  Design practice and research methods in applying the vernacular to contemporary contexts

20

1

The architectural vernacularization of Pacific aid practice



CHARMAINE ‘ILAIŪ TALEI

Introduction The flow of foreign aid is critical to the construction of modern institutional architecture in the Pacific region. Aid dependency, albeit contentious,1 is the economic and architectural reality for many Pacific Island2 nations and this has been the case for several decades. This chapter contributes an understanding of how Pacific Island project stakeholders and design teams adapt the rigid process of aid delivery and vernacularize the resulting architecture. Moreover, it shows how the aid procurement process, the design deliverables, and the underlying commercial and political interests are important features of the flow of labour, materials, architectural ideas and funding to design and construct contemporary architecture of the Pacific Islands. As a Tongan architect and academic, I have worked primarily in Indigenous-led and Indigenous-focussed architectural practices for most of my practising career, to date, and primarily in the context of aid architecture. From 2015 to 2020, I worked on several significant aid-funded architectural projects located in the South West Pacific region. Through action research, my observations and insights are drawn from these practice experiences and critically reviewed in this chapter. The architecture of the Pacific Islands has transformed in materiality, construction methodology, form and stylistic qualities for millennia.3 Pacific architecture, like most vernacular traditions, shows a building heritage that is not static in its technical practices but one that adapts to enable the values and aspirations of its Indigenous peoples. Many Tongan Islanders place value on architectural materials and ideas that are sourced from overseas countries like New Zealand, Australia and the United States due to a culturally embedded view of modernity.4 Such non-local sources display one’s esteemed connections outside of the Kingdom of Tonga; moreover, materials from overseas are reputed to have greater durability compared to local alternatives. Having travelled to other Pacific Islands to conduct work there as an architect and being acquainted with people from various countries across the South West Pacific Islands, I found that this Indigenous aspiration for building modernity prevails amongst other Pacific Islanders beyond Tonga as well. I agree modernity is desirable but with ambivalence, or what Paul Gilroy5 describes as ‘double consciousness’, where simultaneously in Pacific architecture one loves certain aspects of modernity (like convenience, technology, etc.) but simultaneously hates other aspects (such as monetary cost, cultural change, etc.). In the process of any architectural mimicry or borrowing, there are inevitable divergent translations, or ‘slippages,’ as Homi Bhabha6 describes it, and which I argue can be due to such ambivalent tensions. It is along this discussion that I explain how Pacific peoples acquire, apply and adapt other forms of architecture for local use, which supports the agenda of vernacularization. These slippages colour the appropriated forms of Western architecture. The meeting of local and global agendas to implement an aid building project presents a situation where such architectural slippages easily occur, and the mainstream agendas are disrupted directly and indirectly by those involved and in doing so manufactures an Indigenous interpretation of its modern architecture.7

To appreciate the cross-cultural design content of aid architecture in the Pacific, it is important to not only study the resultant building but also reflect on the design, procurement and delivery process that it entails. Since all these aspects make up what we understand as architecture, this chapter emphasizes aid architecture as a process and not only a product. Given the best intentions of an architect or Indigenous client to employ vernacular architectural ideas, there appears to be a superficial aspiration from aid tendering requirements to employ ‘the local’ and what is ‘sustainable’, but ultimately limiting the actual opportunity to employ or reinterpret vernacular architecture later in the building process. Within the complexities of diplomatic and commercial agendas, expected in any architectural project of this scale of regional and international engagement, a key finding that this chapter presents is the vernacularization of delivering aid-funded projects located in the Pacific Islands. The chapter identifies the need to develop culturally attuned co-design approaches for collaborating in Pacific Island cross-cultural contexts to further vernacularize aid architecture. Prior to a discussion about my practice experiences in the Kingdom of Tonga and the Solomon Islands, the chapter starts with a contextual review of the flow of foreign aid in the Pacific Island region.

Aid in the Pacific The Official Development Assistance (ODA) scheme reflects diplomatic relations between Pacific Island countries and overseas donor countries. Depending on the need, the mutual political interests and the opportunities for donation, the aid funding can be categorized as a grant or a loan. Each donor country varies in their political engagement with that recipient partner country. According to a report by the Australian National University Development Policy Centre, in 2012 to 2016 New Zealand offered aid solely in the form of grants.8 On the other hand, in the same period Australia changed tact to apply a percentage of their aid funding as loans, following China Aid and financial institutions like Asian Development Bank and World Bank to name a few. Within this mix, there could be ‘tied aid’ which is ‘ … the proviso that it will be spent on goods or services from the donor’s country’.9 In such circumstances, the aspect of value for money is disputed. Aid can be given indirectly to recipient Pacific countries via bilateral, multilateral and regional support and through co-financed programmes, non-government organizations providing technical assistance on projects rather than investing in capital works.10 As of 2018, Australian Aid (AusAid or DFAT) was recorded as the dominant donor in the Pacific region,11 with New Zealand (MFAT) as second and China Aid as a close third,12 and more recently, in 2019, it was reported that Japan had superseded China.13 Historically, the Australia Government has given most of its aid to support governance and capacity building programmes in the Pacific.14 However, due partly to geopolitical pressure Australia’s strategic priorities are shifting towards investments in economic development and infrastructure.15 In 2019, the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) of the Australian Government called for tenders from the engineering, architectural, project management and building companies in Australia and New Zealand (NZ) to tender towards the inclusion on the AIFFP construction panel. Selection to participate on this panel enables external parties to work with Pacific governments on Australian Aid construction projects. Through the AIFFP, the Australian Government aimed to invest two billion to economically enable infrastructure in the Pacific, such as telecommunications, energy, transport and water infrastructure. The key assumption was that such investments would reduce poverty in the Pacific.16 AIFFP, like Austrade – promoting Australian businesses globally, including in the Pacific – are examples of negotiating value for money, whereby the risk of investment and its quality assurance are managed by the inclusion and recommendations of technical expertise from the donating country.

22 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

A problem in analysing development funding is the inconsistencies in record-keeping of what and how aid is spent.17 However, accurate understandings are critical for architectural research of this kind, because the term ‘infrastructure’ may cluster buildings, civil works and other large engineering infrastructure projects under the same category. Therefore, it is difficult to determine how much aid is directly related to architectural developments. One can deduce types of building assistance based on available data. For example, a study18 that reviewed the top three donors to the Pacific in 2016 – AusAID, MFAT and China Aid – summarizes the Lowy Institute data for 2012 to 2016. The report explains the top sectors in which NZ gives ODA funding included: economic development 34 per cent, governance 24 per cent and education 16 per cent. I would add that emergency 5 per cent and health 13 per cent may also have some building assistance allocated to its categories. Furthermore, Australia’s ODA was issued in support of governance programmes (33 per cent), with education, economic development and health all as close seconds. China, on the other hand, granted more than half of its aid in economic development, with education and governance identified as other strategies. With a strong focus on economic development, Chinese Foreign Aid are known to invest in infrastructure works like roads and bridges to support local economy. Chinese labour often forms part of the tied loan agreement.19 Common conditions can be found in the procurement processes across Australian Aid, New Zealand aid, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank. Within requests for proposals (RFP) to tender on a project there are the following similar inclusions such as experts who can facilitate the cross-cutting issues of capacity building and social safeguard programmes alongside the project delivery. RFPs express the need for the design to be socially inclusive, which architecturally means having spaces designed to be compliant with universal access building requirements. Another condition is to demonstrate female equal opportunities in the consultancy team make-up and similarly demonstrate the inclusion of local Indigenous experts and employment of Indigenous labour force in the design and construction teams. Australian aid projects, for example, typically require technical expertise in disaster and climate resilience and the implementation of safety in design measures. ADB adds an anti-corruption clause that the technical lead organization must uphold in its delivery of the aid project. Countries of focus in this chapter include the Kingdom of Tonga and Solomon Islands. Tonga is heavily reliant on aid and private remittances to economically build its key infrastructure and services.20 In 2020, according to the Lowy Institute data, foreign aid totalled just over $160 million for Tonga. Since the early 2000s, aid funding for local Tongan building projects has been granted mainly by Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Chinese Foreign Aid, Australian Aid and New Zealand’s MFAT, with World Bank emerging as in recent years.21 In Tonga, JICA and World Bank tend to target specific capital works like a refurbishment of a school or an airport. Chinese Foreign Aid have historically funded discrete building projects but are increasingly focussed on large civil infrastructure works. Australian Aid generally focus on ‘soft’ infrastructure like governance reform, equitable health systems and capacity building.22 More tangible outcomes by Australian Aid include post-disaster emergency aid projects and donation of Australian Aid domestic water tanks that are highly recognizable in Tongan villages. However, with the establishment of the AIFFP in 2019, Australian Aid may generate significant architectural aid projects in the future. MFAT, to date, have focussed on economic development and governance types of projects in Tonga. In alignment with these strategies, MFAT’s has recently supported the design and construction of the new Tonga Parliament Building tendered in 2020. The Solomon Islands is a Pacific country receiving much geopolitical interest in terms of aid projects, which correlates with my practice experience of working on several of its significant architectural projects during 2015 to 2020. In 2011, aid was equivalent to half of the Solomon Islands’ national income.23 In 2020, according to the Lowy Institute data, the Solomon Islands received in total just over $235 million

Architectural Vernacularization of Pacific Aid Practice 23

of foreign aid, which is decline compared to previous years. In 2023, according to The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),24 the Solomon Islands was within the top three of all Pacific country recipients supported by Australian and New Zealand aid programmes. Australia’s DFAT is by far the largest donor to the Solomon Islands which in 2020 to 2021 allocated a total budget estimate of $156.8 million with over 65 per cent of that funding being a bilateral allocation.25

Project reflections Considering the flow of aid, labour and commodities to design and build new architectural developments in the Pacific Islands, in this next section I discuss recent project experiences26 as a researcher and practising architect that cannot be understood simply from the aid literature. In the Solomon Islands, during the years 2015 to 2020, I worked on the architectural design team of two large educational projects in Honiara – the multi-donor-funded Solomon Islands National University (SINU) and led the design and documentation of the new University of South Pacific, Solomon Islands (USP) campus. In 2019 to 2020, I led the design and documentation of an area health medical clinic in Avu Avu, a remote village on Guadalcanal Island accessed only by sea vessels. The clinic was funded by the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and administered by the World Health Organisation Country Office in Solomon Islands. In the Kingdom of Tonga from 2017 to 2019, I was the lead architect on the Refurbishment of the Tonga Airport funded by the World Bank Group and administered by the Pacific Aviation Investment programme for Tonga. From these experiences, there are three categories identified where divergent differences easily occur and inevitably vernacularize and indigenize the foreign official development assistance programmes. These themes are about project delivery, procurement in a remote location and lastly local placemaking through building design.

Vernacularization of project delivery An important issue that arises from aid projects is the recurrence of cross-cultural misunderstandings in personal interactions when delivering an architectural project. Establishing an effective cross-cultural design engagement involves a grounding in culturally relevant concepts, vernacular practices for meetings and communication styles, and knowledge of locally specific architectural values. Together, such attributes enable a practitioner to co-design with cultural empathy and participate effectively in the decision-making process. Research by Pacific aid and development specialists Wood et al.27 says it is assumed that the effectivity of aid delivery is due to a lack of governance structure in donor countries. However, their research dismantles this proposition and instead they assert that physical remoteness and having smaller populations are the common, but unchangeable, reasons for ineffective aid programmes. Wood et  al. add clientelist politics and the patronage-oriented nature of democratic Pacific countries as other areas of concern.28 On the ground, aid workers have complained of the difficulty when engaging Pacific clients in project meetings and gaining full participation in delivering a project.29 What may be perceived as aloof and disengaged donor recipients towards the delivery of their aid project, I would argue are behaviours that are important to unpack for effective cross-cultural design engagement. Pacific clients and stakeholders of aid-funded projects may inadvertently disrupt the delivery of projects by operating within their own cultural worldviews, as the following project examples demonstrate. On the USP project, an Indigenous environmental specialist on the ADB-funded project in the Solomon Islands was slow in delivering his official environmental report to complete the tender documentation. The reason for this delay was that he needed to attend a funeral on a remote island. This delay created much

24 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

frustration from the administering client who was running out of time to complete and secure the ADB loan for the construction phase. The issue was exacerbated with the minimal and difficult communication from the consultant located on the remote island. Perhaps considered as unprofessional, the actions of the local specialist, nevertheless, showed that cultural obligations far outweighed his contractual professional obligations. Such disruptions to a rigid delivery process of an aid project can be explained as a difference in worldviews and values. However, when designing a culturally appropriate programme of delivery it would be prudent for donors to expect such unforeseen events, given the inclusion of Indigenous experts on the consultancy team. Having specific contract clauses that allow for an appropriate extension of time on project deliverables or plan in enough ‘buffer’ time for unforeseen events can create a project delivery that adapts easily and acknowledges local customs and values. Cross-cultural communication is an important skill that can be gained through greater cultural awareness and developing one’s cultural competency. Talanoa (a Tongan, Fijian and Samoan word that generally means to talk in an informal way, to tell stories and relate experiences) is an Indigenous research method and academic concept that encourages reciprocal conversations and open dialogue between people.30 Reflecting on project experiences, I use talanoa in this context to allude to the idiosyncrasies of how Pacific stakeholders would customarily speak during project meetings. Pacific people often first share of themselves to each other (background, heritage, connection to place, etc.) and create a place of understanding from which to build the business-related conversations. Warmth, or what Tongans call māfana, is established when the ‘ice’ has been broken relationally and makes way for understanding each other’s motivations, and talanoa can achieve this. Talanoa, like other Indigenous forms of speaking such as ‘yarning’ in the Indigenous Australian sense, could appear as long-winded and a non-structured conversation that rambles on and on about peripheral or non-related subjects and then may return to the matter at hand or indirectly answer the query in a subliminal, humorous or metaphorical way or as Tongans describe as heliaki.31 The answer can also discretely emerge within the wider conversation. Talanoa can be mistaken as unproductive or misinterpreted as a distraction but allowing time and space to talanoa with Pacific recipients within project meetings can engender meaningful collaboration and lead to effective results on aid projects. Whilst in Honiara, Solomon Islands working on a government project, my PhD qualification became a ‘warmer’ in the conversation around the board room before I presented our design proposal. I received many questions about what, why and how I did my research. In the Solomon Islands, having the esteemed title of doctor is highly respected and Solomon Islanders habitually use the person’s title when talking to that person. This conversation, although unrelated to my design presentation, created the amicable setting for my talk, which at the end was successful and allowed our company to move on to the next phase of design. ‘Saving face’ is a common behaviour when engaging Pacific clients and certainly applies to the delivery process of aid projects. Clearly, it is not a Pacific-inherited behaviour since all cultures apply some form of saving face behaviour in various contexts to remain dignified before others. Pacific clients applied saving face to remain objective in front of the design team, a builder and an aid agency’s project manager in a formal setting, but later their real opinions became known through other informal conversations. Such behaviour could be interpreted as disorderly to a project that needs to be delivered efficiently with open and clear communication and formalized within meeting minutes. I witnessed on the Tonga airport project, for example, that sensitive decisions or opinions were avoided in discussions to avoid disgracing the person concerned. Thus, it is not uncommon to hear later that those decisions and negotiations were made at the local pigeon shooting range, or at an evening of kava drinking, or outside the church hall, or at a family gathering. Working with our local architectural and engineering office, who had the existing relationships with the project stakeholders, proved useful, since important project decisions, although indirect, were communicated later back to the wider team. The limitation, then, for a non-local consultant or aid worker

Architectural Vernacularization of Pacific Aid Practice 25

who has no existing relationships or close connections with local recipient stakeholders is that they are not always privy to the Pacific client’s real intentions or decision-making process. Thus, developing cultural competency and cross-cultural design skills becomes extremely important for the non-local consultant and aid worker as they forge these new project team relationships. Technically, operating between different time zones and the inequality of internet access with good reception can cause inevitable disruptions in the delivery of aid projects. For example, on the airport project in Tonga there was a miserable attempt to host a user group meeting via the local consultant’s meeting room and include design consultants from Australian locations. The painful lag in internet reception made it difficult to communicate successfully between the various parties involved. Thereafter, client meetings were completed by the in-country team and then relayed later to the Australian-based design team. Certainly, this was not an ideal situation for the leading design consultants because second-hand design and project information has its own shortfalls. Receiving accurate minute taking and timely delivery of the meeting records, therefore, became even more crucial for the wider team and the project’s workflow. Evidently, this scenario shows how a typical project delivery needs to be agile and adapt to suit the technical conditions of the recipient country and its local stakeholders for more effective aid architectural processes. A shortfall of the current aid procurement and design delivery processes is the limited time given to conduct adequate client engagement and briefing. Some responsibility lies with the partnering local government who may be administering the aid project. Having tight timeframes and pressing budgetary concerns to gain the next monetary instalment within the funding cycle can altogether create challenging deadlines for both architects and local clients to develop a comprehensive design brief for the project. Moreover, completing project deliverables are often hurried so that a tender cost estimate can be generated to substantiate further funding requests from donor. Because of these demanding deadlines, it is common for local clients to provide a very preliminary brief and make significant amendments along the way to make up for unclarified expectations, which is clearly not ideal for design projects. For some large infrastructure projects, a feasibility study may be available and was completed by an external consultant employed to also capture an agreed brief. This project scope of works is then used to create a RFP that is tendered out to a larger design and project management team. This was the case for the refurbishment of the Tonga airport and USP projects. However, as often is the case, the client user group who was first consulted may have shifted in staffing arrangements and the present group brings differing attitudes to the earlier design brief, which complicates the detailed design of latter phases of the project.32 In such instances, the challenges for architects and project managers alike are to manage these ongoing design changes and minimize potential variations during the design documentation and construction phases. The reality of aid architecture presents demanding fiscal environments for local project stakeholders and their design consultants, and it is here that vernacularization can also occur through adhoc measures to respond to demanding situations.

Vernacularization of procurement Great design intentions that begin at the concept design stage are challenged and must stand the test of aid requirements at the end of the documentation phase. Typically, RFP clauses request that consultants apply locally available building materials and construction methodologies in the development of the design as well as include local labour as part of capacity building programme. At times, there is the clause about applying sustainable design methods. A common design response is to limit dependency on building services for conditioned spaces in favour of passive ventilation. But once in procurement or the tendering phase, these great intentions are tested. For example, other project requirements for durable materials (to minimize maintenance by local operators) and the funding requirement for a generic architectural specification with brand

26 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

names and known product warranties, all work to switch the scenario where earlier aspirations for locally sourced and sustainable design initiatives are now set aside for more scientifically tested methods. This misalignment of design goals and aid-funding requirements reflect another reality of aid-funded projects. In the projects I have encountered, this repeated cycle of misalignment evades the opportunity to explore vernacular technologies using locally sourced building materials that support local craftsmanship, leading to site-specific and sustainable buildings. These are all missed opportunities to develop environmentally and culturally appropriate modern interpretations of vernacular architecture. On the refurbishment of Tonga’s Fua‘amotu International Airport, an Australian-based company33 won the construction contract, anonymously named MC1. MC1 were astute to partner with a local building contractor, who provided local tradesmen to complete all the site works. MC1 also put in charge an experienced expat builder as the site supervisor. This employment methodology was encouraged within the tender documents to develop local capacity; however, overseas contractors do find this requirement economically advantageous because labour costs are also greatly reduced. Tendering to overseas main contractors on certain projects does prove logistically sensible because in some cases where aid buildings exceed the medium-storey building, there is a necessity to ship over cranes and heavy-duty machinery that are not readily available in the recipient countries.

Fig. 1.1  New decorative timber screen outside the check-in area, Fua‘amotu International Airport, Kingdom of Tonga. Photograph by author, 5 September 2019.

Architectural Vernacularization of Pacific Aid Practice 27

Fig. 1.2  Coconut wood battens along the bulkhead and counters of the refurbished check-in area and its woven compass tile feature, Fua‘amotu International Airport, Kingdom of Tonga. Photography by author, 29 August 2022.

On the same project, the internal pricing and procurement strategies by MC1 meant that some building materials were swapped out, like the specification for a locally sourced concrete breeze block. In its place, honed masonry breeze blocks from a quarry in Queensland were imported. Also, instead of local hardwood timber for a decorative screen, the builder applied a cheaper option of treated pine timber with a stain finish (see Figure 1.1). Fortunately, the coconut wood batten option for the decorative check-in bulkhead was not so easily swapped out, which as a material is a nod to Tonga’s early architectural heritage. But, as it turned out, the most accessible commercial grade of coconut wood was supplied by an Australian company, also located in Fiji, but the actual coconut wood product came from South-East Asia and the Middle East (see Figure 1.2). Specifying ‘local’ is clearly fraught with systemic issues about the actual sources of building materials,34 as well as the manufacturing capacity and the availability of product warranties within recipient countries. On the medical clinic project in Avu Avu, our architectural and engineering design was prefaced on its remoteness. For this reason, local hardwoods were predominantly specified for internal structural framing to limit the need to import materials on a large barge from the other side of Guadalcanal Island’s capital town Honiara. The structural timber frame and its bracing governed the openings and corridors of the design. Favourably, sourcing local materials presented a potential micro-economy for locals. An open market tendering process, as per the aid requirements, led to a New Zealand builder35 winning the tender – named anonymously MC2. Their bid proposed to replace all specified local hardwood for treated timber from overseas and apply a construction methodology that relied on a prefabricated wall system. Consequently,

28 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

by tendering to an international market, the initial aspiration that considered the local remote site and its available materials switched to a construction methodology now favoured by the funding agency because it complied with their procurement requirements. Nevertheless, the overseas managing contractor, due to the remote site, still could not evade the reliance on a locally sourced workforce to complete the construction. These examples demonstrate how the agendas of aid architecture in the Pacific can become convoluted and misaligned in the latter stages of a project between aid procurement strategies and the initial design aspirations of the aid agency and/or Pacific client. Architectural attempts to fulfil a design brief that requested ‘local’ and ‘sustainable’ representations of architecture become merely nominal. To vernacularize project procurement does involve specifying and designing with local materials and utilizing local craftsmanship and knowledges. But these architectural endeavours to procure ‘the vernacular’ can easily become foiled by the donor’s risk management, the construction company’s bottom line and liability concerns over product warranties. Moreover, these practice experiences highlight the industry limitations existing in the Pacific namely the gaps in manufacturing locally a wide range of modern building materials, and the need for proven commercial and durable grades of materials and products.

Vernacularization of the building design Aid dependency creates an ambivalent context where one may consider the architecture as neither from here nor from there. As implied in the previous sections, the Pacific architecture that results from foreign aid does not always express the visible and tangible forms of vernacular architecture. But, when it does, it is often due to a clause stipulated in the brief and the aspirations of the client combined with the sensibilities of the design consultants. When required in the brief, vernacular architecture can be considered as a tool to demonstrate the amicable diplomatic relations between the donor and the partnering country. Buildings given within foreign aid contexts, therefore, can take on the role of a tangible gesture of donation and equally a sign of achievement by those locally involved.36 The brief requirements of vernacular forms, materials and styles of architecture can boost community buy-in and build relations between the Indigenous recipient and their own community, especially when lobbying local support. Thus, applying vernacular architecture can complete the cycle of aid by showing cultural and local acceptance within this diplomatic transaction. On the USP project in the Solomon Islands there was an agreement between the Indigenous client’s aspirations and the funding agency’s brief for a ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ style of architecture and ‘durable’ materials. Sometimes such aspirations are driven by the aid partner who requires a level of quality assurance to protect their investment, as described in the previous section about procurement. In the case of the Solomon Islands National University, it was the client who expressed their desire for the architectural design to reflect a contemporary ‘overseas’ campus. The lead Australian architect, Barry Kitson, in response, drew from a mixture of international architectural references to demonstrate this brief. Kitson also applied his own ideas observed from vernacular thatched buildings spotted along Honiara to inform his design. The atrium of the campus development reflected the pattern of layering seen in the vernacular roof forms.37 The Teacher and Lecture Theatre blocks, which are more international in architectural style, flank this vernacular-centric public atrium building that balances the whole development. Regardless of brief requirements and client aspirations, the architect on a Pacific aid project has an opportunity to create placemaking through cross-cultural design techniques, like drawing on cultural references, motifs, finishes and colour palettes that best express local cultural and environmental values and ideas. For the refurbishment of the Tonga airport, I represented Tongan references in the tiled floor features of the arrivals and check-in halls (see Figure 1.3). Upon arrival, visitors are welcomed by a tiled feature that

Architectural Vernacularization of Pacific Aid Practice 29

shows an abstract representation of the Kingdom of Tonga’s archipelago. The geometric pattern representing each major island group draws on the Tongan motifs found within lalava (sennit lashings) – a series of squares decreasing sequentially creating a raised or inverted visual platform.38 In the check-in area its tiled floor feature represents a woven fala (the traditional Tongan mat) metaphorically laid out for those leaving Tonga. Customarily, Tongans sit and partake in a farewell meal or ceremony with their guests on a fala in one’s home. So here in this airport’s departure location, where people say goodbye to loved ones, a woven mat is represented on the tiled floor and its design configured as a compass with the four cardinal points, suggesting the various locations that await Tonga’s departing guests. A new external screen was required for the check-in area to provide privacy and shelter from the driving elements from the forecourt side. In response, I designed a screen made from timber battens and concrete breeze blocks, as discussed previously in the procurement section. Masonry materials are a nod to the value Tongan people have ascribed to concrete block materials since it was appropriated into Tongan vernacular building practices since the early twentieth century.39 The screen was arranged to reflect the geometrical triangular patterns seen in Tongan tapa (decorated bark cloth). The cultural significance of these floor finishes, check-in screen design and other designed elements was positively received by the Tongan clients who understood and felt connected with the cultural meanings of the motifs. Furthermore, Australian and Aboriginal graphic and interior designer Bree Memmott created signage for the Tonga airport project which was bilingual and applied international terminal standards (see Figure 1.4).

Fig. 1.3  Tiled floor feature showing lalava motifs that represent the key island groups of the archipelago within the refurbished arrivals hall, Fua‘amotu International Airport, Kingdom of Tonga. Photograph by author, 29 August 2022.

30 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

Fig. 1.4  Example of the new bilingual wayfinding signage, Fua‘amotu International Airport, Kingdom of Tonga. Photograph by Bree Memmott, 13 November 2019.

We paid special attention to displaying the correct diacritical marks for the Tongan words to show cultural acuity and appropriate wayfinding and signage design. Altogether these approaches to placemaking design on the airport project proved to be successful strategies to leverage support from the client for a particular material choice or design element during value management negotiations with the builder. When an Indigenous client sees their own cultural identity represented in the aid architecture, this can lead to a greater sense of project ownership. Designers working in any cross-cultural setting best have an appropriate level of understanding of cultural meanings to avoid the ad-hoc appropriation of disjointed motifs and misinterpreted emblems, when attempting to represent an unfamiliar culture through architectural spaces. Co-design design processes are especially useful when the understanding of local culture is limited. However, the challenge lies in convincing aid agencies to make financial allowances for participatory design processes. Architectural placemaking could be improved in Pacific aid contexts if more time was given to client and stakeholder briefing and codesign engagements. Furthermore, stronger alignments between construction tendering and placemaking design briefs could enable sustainable and culturally appropriate architecture with meaningful outcomes for all.

Architectural Vernacularization of Pacific Aid Practice 31

Conclusions Pacific aid architecture becomes a commodity and service in the diplomatic transactions between economically dominant countries in the West and East and the recipient countries in the Pacific Ocean. In such contexts, it can be difficult to distinguish the influence of local recipient stakeholders on the resulting architecture, when it lacks obvious vernacular qualities. However, as discussed, the aid architecture of two Pacific countries – the Solomon Islands and the Kingdom of Tonga – reveals a vernacularization of the project delivery and to an extent the procurement process and building designs. The practice experiences discussed in this chapter show how vernacularization of aid architecture can occur in the slippages of architectural borrowing or mimicry, due to the following: cultural idiosyncrasies of Pacific clients; the complexities of delivering a project remotely – especially between overseas design consultants and Pacific-based clients; the inevitable employment of local labour and skills; the fiscal challenges of project timelines; the design attempts by architects to locate the project within its culture and place, however contested that might be, and the Indigenous client’s own values and their view of modernity. These ideas are not meant to be representative of all Pacific projects, but they provide a sense of the intricacies surrounding the development of Pacific-based institutional architecture in the twenty-first century. This chapter is an attempt to widen our understanding of the practice of aid architecture in the Pacific Islands and how Indigenous people determine their own modern existences. Moreover, this study highlights the opportunity for architectural academics and practitioners to develop culturally attuned co-design practices and project delivery processes to contribute meaningful and aspirational architecture in the aid development space.

Notes 1. Carolyn Hunt, ‘Aid to the Pacific Is the Least Value for Money’, Devpolicy Blog, 11 February 2020, https:// devpolicy.org/aid-to-the-pacific-is-the-least-value-for-money-20200211/. 2. It is increasingly common in Polynesian-centric research to use the term Moana. But I have purposely chosen the common usage of ‘Pacific Islands’ within aid literature for clarity. I use Tongan Islanders and Solomon Islanders to refer to those living in their homeland islands, as opposed to those in the Pacific Rim locations. 3. Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei, ‘Understanding the Diffusion of Coconut Architecture through an Analysis of Thatching Applied on Traditional Tongan and Lauan (Fijian) Architectures’, Journal of Pacific Studies 33, no. 2 (2013): 47–75. 4. Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei, ‘The Twenty-First-Century Tongan Fale: The Emergence of Fale Puha, Fale ‘Amelika and Fale Tufitufi’, in The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture, ed. Elizabeth Grant, Kelly Greenop, Albert L. Refiti and Daniel J. Glenn (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 697–716; Charmaine ‘Ilaiū Talei, ‘From Thatch to Concrete Block: Architectural Transformations of Tongan Fale’ (PhD diss., University of Queensland, 2016), 265–71; Charmaine Ilaiu, ‘Building Tonga’s Western Fale’, Architecture New Zealand, no. 2 (March 2011): 61–3. 5. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993). 6. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 7. Marshall Sahlins, ‘On the Anthropology of Modernity; or, Some Triumphs of Culture over Despondency Theory’, in Culture and Sustainable Development in the Pacific, ed. Antony Hooper (Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, 2000), 44–61. 8. Terence Wood, ‘A Summary of New Zealand Aid Flows to the Pacific’, 12 August 2019, http://devpolicy.org/ publications/submissions/Terence-Wood-2019-SUPPLEMENTARY-submission-data-on-NZ-aid-to-Pacific.pdf 9. Wood, ‘A Summary of New Zealand Aid’.

32 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

10. Commonwealth of Australia, DFAT, Strategy for Australia’s Aid Investments in Economic Infrastructure, July 2015, https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/economic-infrastructure-development-strategy.pdf, 3. 11. Matthew Dornan et  al., ‘Aiding the Pacific: The Changing Nature of Australian Foreign Aid to the Region’, in The Development Bulletin 80: Pacific Reflections: Personal Perceptions of Aid and Development, ed. P.  Thomas (Canberra: Australian National University Development Studies Network, November 2018), 145–54, http:Crawford.anu.edu.au/rmap/devnet/dev-bulletin.php. 12. Wood, ‘A Summary of New Zealand Aid’. 13. OECD, ‘6.1. ODA to Oceania – Summary’, Report: Development Aid at a Glance 2021, accessed 22 January 2023, https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-topics/ Oceania-Development-Aid-at-a-Glance-2021.pdf. 14. Wood, ‘A Summary of New Zealand Aid’. 15. Terence Wood, ‘Why Australian Aid’s Infrastructure Fixation Won’t Be a Boon for the Pacific?’, East

Asia

Forum

Quarterly,

15

August

2019,

https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/08/15/

why-australian-aids-infrastructure-fixation-wont-be-a-boon-for-the-pacific/. 16. Commonwealth of Australia, DFAT, Strategy for Australia, 2. 17. Terence Wood et al., ‘Why Are Aid Projects Less Effective in the Pacific?’, Development Policy Centre Discussion Paper No. 87, 2020, https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3613490, 2; Dornan et al, ‘Aiding the Pacific’, 145. 18. Wood, ‘A Summary of New Zealand Aid’. 19. Edward Cavanough, ‘When China Came Calling: Inside the Solomon Islands Switch’, The Guardian, Sunday 8, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/08/when-china-came-calling-inside-the-solomon-islands-switch. 20. Stephen Howes and Beth Orton, ‘Pacific Exceptionalism and Its Implications for Australian Pacific Policy: Submission into the “Inquiry into activating trade and investment between Australia and Pacific Island countries,”’ (Submission 52 presented to Parliament of Australia, Inquiry into Australia activating greater trade and investment with Pacific island countries, July 2020), 8. 21. ‘Tonga’, Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map, accessed 27 January 2023, https://pacificaidmap.lowyinstitute.org/. 22. Commonwealth of Australia, DFAT, ‘Aid Program Performance Report Summary 2018–19: Tonga’, September 2019, accessed 30 November 2020, https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/tonga-appr-2018-19.pdf. 23. ‘ODA and Poverty Resource Flows to Solomon Islands’, accessed 30 November 2020, http://www.devinit.org/ wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Investments-to-End-Poverty-Chapter-10-Solomon-Islands.pdf. 24. OECD, ‘Aid at a Glance Charts’, accessed 29 November 2020, https://www.oecd.org/countries/­solomonislands/ aid-at-a-glance.htm. 25. Commonwealth 29

of

November

Australia, 2020,

DFAT,

‘Development

Assistance

in

Solomon

Islands’,

accessed

https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/solomon-islands/development-assistance/

development-assistance-in-solomon-islands. 26. I worked at a multidisciplinary engineering and architectural company, which remains anonymous, from 2015 to 2020. Colleagues Barry Kitson and Bree Memmott also worked here. 27. Wood, ‘Why Are Aid Projects’. 28. Wood, ‘Why Are Aid Projects’, 20. 29. Carolyn Hunt, ‘Aid to the Pacific’. 30. Sitiveni Halapua, ‘Talanoa in Building Democracy and Governance’ (Paper presented at Conference of Future Leaders of the Pacific, Pago Pago, American Samoa, February 4–7, 2013); Tamasailau Suaalii-Sauni and Saunimaa M Fulu-Aiolupotea, ‘Decolonising Pacific Research, Building Pacific Communities and Developing Pacific Research Tools: The Case of the Talanoa and the Faafaletui in Samoa’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint 55, no. 3 (December 2014): 331–44.

Architectural Vernacularization of Pacific Aid Practice 33

31. Okusitino Māhina et al., Ko e ngaahi ‘ata mei he hisitōlia mo e kalatua ‘o Tongá: ke tufunga’i ha lea Tonga fakaako (Auckland: Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Auckland, 2006), 77, 84. 32. As experienced on the Tonga airport project, the layout of the x-ray room changed several times throughout the project. It eventually became clear that the client-supplied airport x-ray scanning equipment was to be funded by another aid grant, and the donor changed the specifications of the equipment. The late procurement of this machine meant it was due to arrive after practical completion of the construction phase. Consequently, the design of the x-ray room was re-modified to include a removable wall facing the airstrip to allow for a future installation. 33. Name of the building contractor has been omitted from this chapter. 34. Refer to Anna Tweeddale, ‘Diffracting Construction: A Praxis of Attentiveness to Situated Material Entanglements of Architecture and Construction’ (PhD diss., RMIT, 2020). 35. Name of the building contractor has been omitted from this chapter. 36. About the latter, the initial Vice Chancellor on the USP project in the Solomon Islands was eager to complete the construction of the campus buildings prior to the end of his tenure to leave a tangible legacy of his professional achievement. 37. Pers.comm. Barry Kitson, November 2018. 38. Refer to the work of Tongan artist Filipe Tohi for more examples of the langi, http://www.lalava.net/ 39. ‘Ilaiū Talei, ‘From Thatch to Concrete Block’.

34 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

2

Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui: A genealogy of Māori meeting houses



SAVANNAH BROWN (NGĀTI WHĀTUA KI KAIPARA, NGĀPUHI, NGĀTI HINE, NGĀTI WAI), AMBER RUCKES (TŪHOE), FAYE MENDES-UNDERWOOD (NGĀPUHI, TE RARAWA), AISEA FANAMANU, DEIDRE BROWN (NGĀPUHI, NGĀTI KAHU), JASON INGHAM

Tīmatanga Kōrero: Introduction1 Marae refer to a complex of Māori buildings (whare) around a courtyard and are the most culturally important architectural spaces in Māori society. The whare \ on a marae are physical manifestations of culture, history and people.2 On contemporary marae, whare include the wharenui, literally the ‘large house’, a meeting house for the marae community, also known as whare rūnanga, wharehui and, if extensively decorated, whare whakairo.3 Other marae whare are the wharekai (dining halls), wharepaku (ablution facilities), kāuta (kitchens and cooking sheds, wharepuni (sleeping houses), pātaka (foodstores), kōhanga (nursery) and other multi-purpose whare.4 There is currently no framework for architectural and engineering professionals to account for cultural considerations when working on renovation and retrofit solutions for wharenui. This can lead to incompetent understanding and information surrounding Māori architecture and practices that generate unethical solutions, inadequate in a marae setting.5 Utilizing one of the key themes of this book has led us to ask, how have Indigenous and multidisciplinary methodologies, research methods and practices expanded the understanding of vernacular architecture and settlements? In the context of this project, ‘multidisciplinary’ relates to architecture, engineering and mātauranga Māori and vernacular architecture is specifically Māori architecture, namely the wharenui. Our chapter addresses the research question by exploring how kaupapa Māori (Māori approach) research and architectural and earthquake methodologies can be woven together to inform a cohesive relational framework that will be the basis for the future development of the larger research project. The project ‘Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui – a genealogy of meeting houses’ was developed after further investigation into seismic retrofit of wharenui, by a Māori-led team of architecture and engineering students, graduates and professors at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. This research also extends an earlier study and article, ‘Seismic retrofitting of Māori: Wharenui in Aotearoa New Zealand’, written by some of our team and peers that examined the relationship between seismic resilience and wharenui structures.6 As the project is central to the continued maintenance and development of Māori architecture, we ensured we had Māori researchers involved, which allowed for kaupapa Māori research – for Māori, by Māori.

Whakapapa is genealogy and lineage. It is a fundamental concept for Māori that expresses who you are, who you descend from and from where you come. Whakapapa is your shared identity and connection to the past; it is also your understanding of the people and events that enable you to be where and who you are today.7 In this chapter, we refer to the whakapapa of wharenui, as Māori recognize buildings as living ancestors who have lineage through the evolution of time, building practices, materials, iwi (tribes) and design. This project aims to be the first step towards a nationwide whakapapa of wharenui – a relational database of structural, architectural and cultural characteristics of wharenui. We intend to create a new trajectory for the future of these historic structures and Māori architectural research. Once established, the whakapapa database will identify wharenui seismic resilience and propose, where needed, type-specific acceptable solutions to potential seismic problems. The objective is to reduce the cost burden of consultancy for communities seeking to strengthen their wharenui and assisting professionals in their assessments and retrofits. Traditional Māori history and knowledge were shared orally, passed down through generations as there was no written documented language. To ensure that this research project upheld the value and respect of traditional Māori knowledge sharing practices, we planned to meet with marae whānau kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face) at their marae sites. A physical presence on site also provides a deeper understanding of the built whare structures and a connected interview process with the marae whānau. However, the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown restrictions in Aotearoa New Zealand interrupted our first scheduled site visits and marae communities became weary of welcoming others into their communities post-lockdown. We were therefore not able to visit and assess marae and their structural characteristics as initially intended. The information required from the marae visits and interviews could have been shared digitally via email and video calls, but this would not have been culturally appropriate in terms of kawa (customs). Instead, the scope for the current phase of the research project and this chapter is a preliminary understanding and approach to kaupapa Māori research (Māori research methodologies) and marae.

Horopaki: Context Māori are the Indigenous people of Aotearoa (New Zealand), landing their Polynesian waka (ocean voyaging craft) upon the country’s uninhabited shores around 1250 AD.8 Originating from the ancestral homeland of Hawaiki, in the Eastern Pacific, Māori lived undisturbed by the outside world for the next 400 years. During this time, Māori developed an extensive understanding of their natural environment and expanded their rich culture of tikanga (practices), arts and oral storytelling.9 Colonization disrupted this lifeway with the first European visitors, Abel Tasman and crew, arriving in 1642, followed by waves of European visitors until the first permanent European settlement was established in 1814. From this time, successive waves of organized and ad hoc immigration and periods of depopulation have made Māori a minority (currently just under 17 per cent of the total population) on their own land. After the Second World War, most of the Māori population shifted from rural to urban areas in search of better employment and educational prospects, with 88 per cent of the Māori population now living in cities. Aotearoa is rapidly transforming through urban densification and architectural technological advancements, yet these emerging developments are inconsistent with the customary way in which Māori lived for centuries pre-colonization. Māori lived as iwi, surrounded by their whānau, and undertaking daily activities as a community within their marae, using widely practised technologies by community members.10 In Māori society, the marae is one of their most sacred places (Figure 2.1). It is where tikanga Māori (Māori custom) is practised, Te Reo Māori (the Māori language) spoken and culture celebrated. Often the

36 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

Fig. 2.1  Waipapa Marae at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, view from waharoa (gateway entrance) of wharenui. With kind permission of Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland.

last community-owned landholding left due to land alienation, the marae is often referred to as the final bastion of Māori culture. Marae today are still focused on providing for their iwi, although most whānau live outside of their iwi regions. Marae are commonly managed by a rūnanga or marae committee who are whānau descendants of that marae. The duty of organizing marae-related functions, pōwhiri (welcoming ceremony) and maintenance falls to them. The wharenui is the heart of the marae and is the most important building on the complex.11 A large open hall like structure, the wharenui is used for meetings, sleeping, tangihanga (funerals) and other ceremonies.12 It is important to note that wharenui are used differently depending on the tikanga (practices) of the tribal region in which they are built. There are nearly 800 wharenui on marae across Aotearoa that vary in form construction, and decoration associated with their iwi and hapū (sub tribal) areas, leaders, historical events, locally available construction materials and climate.13 They can embody founding ancestors and genealogical descent lines through their formalism, carving and decoration. All internal and external aspects of the wharenui tell a significant story or symbolize the attributes of the iwi or hapū.14 Like most Pacific structures, the wharenui had a traditional gabled roof with a tāhuhu (ridge pole) supported by a pou tokomanawa (centre pole), the front of the building was traditionally adorned with detailed carvings whilst the mahau (verandah) provided a sheltered entrance inside. Each wharenui has its own story behind its decoration and carvings, with most relating to a key ancestor, atua (deity) or history of the iwi. These narratives enforce the mana (prestige) and tapu (sacredness) of the building and enforce

Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui 37

a sense of tūrangawaewae or belonging amongst the iwi. It is evident the wharenui and marae are highly respected and appreciated spaces among Māori and non-Māori alike.15 Colonization and European contact caused significant damage to Māori architecture, influencing Māori to work in towns and live as individual family units away from their ancestral lands and communal marae focused lifestyles.16 The decline in traditional building methods by introducing new materials and construction methods consequently changed wharenui design. With the reduced availability of labour (due to urbanization), requirements to follow building acts and loss of traditional knowledge in rural marae communities, the upkeep of marae, wharenui and their people deteriorated.17 Many are now vulnerable to natural hazards as a consequence. Earthquakes have a rich and turbulent history within Te Ao Māori (the Māori World). Seismic activity, volcanoes and seasons are associated with the atua (deity) Rūaumoko (also known by the names Rūaimoko, Ruamoko, Whakaruaumoko or Ruaumokoroa). As with other atua, Rūaumoko’s whakapapa has many iwi variations. The one that we will focus on in this chapter is the version where Rūaumoko is unborn instead of nursed by the Earth Mother, Papatūānuku. Because his brothers separated their parents Papatūānuku and the sky father Ranginui before he was born, to bring light and enlightenment into the world, Rūaumoko had never seen te ao mārama, the world of light. As a result of being separated, Ranginui and Papatūānuku became profoundly sad. Their pain led Rūaumoko’s brothers to turn Papatūānuku’s face down so that she and Ranginui would not have to look at each other in despair. Rūaumoko’s movements within the womb of Papatūānuku generate earthquakes. When Rūaumoko is facing with his warm side up, it is summer. When Rūaumoko moves and his cool side faces up, winter is near. In some iwi narratives, Rūaumoko collaborates with Whiro, the atua of darkness and the embodiment of evil, to seek vengeance on the world of light and its living beings by generating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Māori have an intimate relationship with earthquakes. The maunga (mountains) we identify ourselves with are a direct result of the rumbling of Rūaumoko. Māori believe in an interrelationship with nature – giving rise to such phrases as ‘ko au te maunga, ko te maunga ko au’ or ‘I am the mountain, and the mountain is me’. Resilience lies with our connection to the land. It is an element that should be acknowledged in the way architects and engineers retrofit existing whare, and design future whare. The relationship between Māori storytelling and earthquakes is evident in traditional oral documentation of mōteatea (laments), pūrākau (ancient legend), pepeha (tribal saying), Whakataukī (proverbs) and waiata (songs). Māori utilized oral storytelling methods as a response to events and to document key aspects of historic natural disasters to prepare future generations. Another way that Māori responded to natural disasters was to name areas after the event which had occurred. For example, Ōngārue located in the middle of the North Island translates to ‘the place of shaking’ and provided local iwi with information surrounding the hazard. The vast majority of Māori history and knowledge is received through oral narratives passed down through iwi generations; this method of information sharing is a key aspect to Māori research and for this project.18 In the wake of the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, New Zealand’s government amended the building act on earthquake-prone buildings (Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Act 2016) with little consideration to how the new requirements would affect wharenui. The new legislation significantly affected every building nationwide in identifying seismic risk areas and requirements. This allows for local body authorities to issue notices to building owners to strengthen or demolish earthquake-prone buildings within set time frames.19 The Act applies to wharenui and marae and forces them to comply with Western standards of renovations, which can alter the cultural appropriateness and identity of the structure. There is currently no methodology to guide wharenui seismic retrofit practice, which has left some Māori

38 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

communities struggling to find bespoke strengthening solutions. The absence of an acceptable method has led to over-specification and Māori design practice being largely ignored.20 Through centuries of whenua (landscape) observations and understanding the environment, Māori have amassed a whakapapa of bountiful knowledge that has informed the construction of structurally sound and thermally effective whare within their marae settlements. European influence continues to dramatically change the marae and its whare, yet Māori have their own kete (baskets) of knowledge of cultural importance and structural mātauranga (knowledge) when building their wharenui. Māori are known to work together in hapū, iwi or pan-iwi organizations. Therefore, this research aims to address wharenui earthquake code compliance by compiling the whakapapa database at a regional and national level. When complete, the database will assist with the diagnosis and remediation of common seismic responsiveness issues and identify seismically resilient Māori building practices.

Kaupapa Māori methodology To understand how Indigenous knowledges and research methodologies inform constructional studies of wharenui, we start by first exploring the foundation elements of relations from a te ao Māori perspective. Following a reflection on Western methodologies, this section concludes by summarizing the whakapapa methodology as an approach to expand methods and practices of engaging, perceiving and developing a multidisciplinary understanding and practice of Indigenous architecture research and settlements.

Te Ao Māori: The Māori world Wharenui and marae are activated by the customs and rituals grounded in te ao Māori. In The Woven Universe, The Reverend Māori Marsden identifies the principles that form relationships within te ao Māori: Haere mai te ihi – Draw near o excellent ones Haere mai te wehi – Draw near o awesome ones Haere mai te mana – Draw near o charismatic ones Haere mai te tapu – Draw near o sacred ones

The chant above is a formal welcome and warning used by the tangata whenua (marae community; hosts) to greet manuhiri (guests) on a marae. The welcome acknowledges, first, the manuhiri’s dignity and status as they have been chosen by atua (gods) to act on their behalf, and second, the manuhiri’s ability to host the intent of the atua within themselves. As a warning, it identifies the manuhiri as tapu since they are agents of the atua. The concept of tapu is more complicated than its often cited English translation as ‘sacred’ or ‘untouchable’. Tapu describes the condition of a person or object removed from common life. As an agent of the atua, the person or object must not be distracted from its purpose. Māori are dedicated to the service of their atua, and any ill action against them will incur the atua’s wrath. Hence, the relationships between  manuhiri and tangata whenua derive from the relationships between people and atua. The interactions between manuhiri and tangata whenua are based on the local kawa (customs) of marae. Kawa minimizes possible transgressions of tapu and mitigate risks to the relationship between people and atua.21 There is a fine line between understanding Kaupapa Māori processes at a high level, which anchors how whakapapa is understood in this research, and generalizing Kaupapa Māori research practices. We want to shift away from the latter towards discussions that have cultural integrity, keep ourselves accountable to our

Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui 39

whanau (extended families) and communities, and contribute to future practices and projects that explore the opportunity of architecture and engineering in te ao Māori.

Engaging with Marae communities Our research approach is shaped by the kawa of the marae. Before the advent of telephone communications, iwi would send an individual or small group ahead to the intended marae to inform them of their impending visit; in other instances, it was common for a large group to arrive unannounced at the waharoa (marae gateway) and wait to be welcomed.22 It was our research expectation and also the expectation of the communities that we were engaging with that we would come together on the marae following the traditional welcoming kawa known as pōwhiri.23 The pōwhiri process can vary between marae. Wiremu Williams of Ngāpuhi iwi describes the breakdown of the word ‘pōwhiri’ with ‘pō’’ translating to ‘new experience of the unknown’ while ‘whiri’’ derives from the root word ‘whiriwhiri’ meaning ‘the act of exchanging information and knowledge’. Therefore, a pōwhiri can be understood as venturing into the unknown and exchanging information.24 A common pōwhiri process consists of arriving at the waharoa and waiting until you are ceremonially called on with a karanga. Whaikōrero (formal speeches) from both groups determine connections and intentions for the visit; waiata (songs) reinforce the words spoken by the kaikōrero (speaker); koha (gifts) is presented to the tangata whenua; harirū (handshakes) and hongi (sharing of breath by pressing noses) are the greetings that bring both groups together physically; and hākari (feasting) breaks the tapu of the ceremony and signifies it is complete.25 Te Reo Māori is the main language spoken, sung and encouraged during the pōwhiri process to ensure that the marae remains a bastion for tikanga Māori (Māori practices), although in modern times and with very few Te Reo speakers, the English language has sometimes been allowed. The experience of a pōwhiri in Te Ao Māori is a spiritual one where heaven, earth and ancestors are acknowledged, and kinship or familiar connections are made. It symbolizes two groups, the manuhiri and tangata whenua, coming together as one, bringing their lived histories and tūpuna (ancestors) before them.26 The architecture of a marae is founded on relationships. If the relationships are not acknowledged appropriately, then the architecture is endangered through transgressive behaviours. Behaviour and relationships are, therefore, the literal and figurative waharoa (gateway) into understanding and developing successful architectural and engineering design and research methodologies.

Kawa and Western ethical research practice The kawa of the marae provide a methodological framework for architectural and engineering research involving marae architecture. As noted earlier, a chant can facilitate the local kawa, thereby acknowledging the relationship/s that dictates the aspiration of Māori knowledge through a culturally safe and collaborative design or research practice. In architecture and engineering, a contract initiates the start of the project, and its purpose is to ensure a duty of care is met in terms of facilitating and maintaining a quality relationship during the project. Many architectural companies within Aotearoa have developed various frameworks that celebrate Māori engagement. The Kawenata o Rata – a formal document that upholds the aspirational relationships between Nga Aho (National Network of Māori Designers) and the New Zealand Institute of Architects – identifies foundational values of whakaritenga (respect), rangatiratanga (authority and responsibility), mātauranga whaihanga (knowledge and rituals) and mahi kotahitanga (cooperation).27

40 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

The Pokapū Whakatairanga Tikanga Māori Māori Design Hub within the Auckland Design Manual, a ‘how to guide’ that sits alongside the Auckland Council Unitary Plan, provides advice on how to embed Māori values into design practice. Within it are the Te Aranga Principles, a set of design values developed by Nga Aho, Te Puni Kokiri (the Ministry of Māori Development) and the Ministry for the Environment. The Aranga principles are based on the values of mana (rangatiratanga authority), whakapapa (names and naming), taiao (natural environment), mauri tu (environmental health), tohu (wider cultural landscape), mahi toi (creative expression) and ahi ka (living presence). Engagement with Māori communities can last beyond the constructional phase of a project. Once an architectural or engineering project with marae is finished, the relationship continues. As a part of this research, we had to adhere to academic research protocols and practices. An example of this practice meant applying for human participant ethics approval before contacting marae and iwi. This process does not easily align with typical tikanga Māori practices of communicating with iwi and whānau. The issues we encountered were regarding our view that participants should have the right to withdraw themselves and their information at any given time during the project. We recognize that Māori data and information are subject to Māori sovereignty and governance therefore wanted our participants to feel that they had full rights and control over the information they provided. The information shared with the research team derives from Māori ancestral and sacred knowledge of tūpuna, marae and whare structures. There is a mutual understanding of the privilege and respect involved here and we wanted to treat the information with a kaitiaki (guardianship) and tikanga (practices) based perspective. Although this may not be the most efficient way to operate and obtain data from a Western research perspective, we felt this information could not come under the research team’s ownership at any time, as it is not ours to claim. We were met with further obstacles from the Human Ethics Committee surrounding our planned time conducting the marae visit and interviews as the maximum recommended time for a participant’s involvement is half a day. Out of respect for the iwi participant involved and their information shared, we planned to let them determine our time spent with them. Time is an agent that facilitates and sustains relationships, and knowledge is subjective to the relationship. That is the premise of whakapapa in this research. Thus, any information provided would be valued as our relationships with iwi are new. The iwi whānau who were available to partake in the marae assessment is subject to each marae; therefore, we could not determine the exact number of people participating on the day. As with most marae committees and Māori communities, these gatherings are open to the wider iwi and whānau and marae were unsure as well on who would be likely to attend. This uncertainty makes the pre-determination between an individual participant and what the ethics protocol deems a ‘focus group’ of two or more participants impossible to confirm until the day of the marae visit. There is also the traditional practice of koha, which is to provide a gift (usually money) to a person or group to maintain social relationships in the act of reciprocity. As the manuhiri, we planned to give koha to the tangata whenua during the pōwhiri to give thanks for their welcoming.28 In the context of this research study, koha is to be utilized as a gesture of respect, thanks and appreciation to the iwi participants who share their time and ancestral knowledge of wharenui structure with the research team. The concern surrounding koha as a research project is the application process to apply for a set amount of financial koha for the marae in advance of the visit. This can make it difficult when marae are only available at short notice or when a larger group is present at the marae on the day, as both scenarios require different koha amounts. The process for koha to be approved can take up to a week, inhibiting the purpose of koha, and blurring the line between a gift of thanks and a transaction.

Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui 41

Whakapapa: Navigating research Within a broader context, Whakapapa (genealogy) can be understood as a construct of how Māori trace their ancestry to the human, built and natural environments. It is an encapsulation of our relationships. The foundation of all relationships is the one with the atua, as represented in the kawa of marae. Whakapapa is, therefore, an agent that dictates our understanding of the natural environment in which we live. From a te ao Māori perspective, if our relationships are not given value, then we run the risk of misinterpreting our natural environment, thereby affecting how we construct and live in this world. Whakapapa is understood in the context of this research by navigating selected discussions and works centred around Kaupapa Māori research practices. In this work, ‘kaupapa’ is understood as the purpose of an event. Whakapapa can be used as a reflective technique to negotiate Western methodologies that surround the architecture and engineering conditions of a marae and its environment. The methodology is a notion of control, and reflection can repurpose, instead or redistribute, that control. The Māori educationalist Graham Smith states that Kaupapa Māori theory carves out spaces for Māori in the academy’s discourse and practice, while also providing a critique of Western academic orthodoxies and methodologies.29 The scholar Mason Durie writes a Kaupapa Māori practice is a means to open a greater understanding of living as a Māori in terms of space and time.30 A Kaupapa Māori practice approach is concerned with allocating time rather than being on time. It prioritizes a platform for critical reflection, thereby materializing whakapapa in the context of this research. Reflection re-presents opportunities of present time through the lens of our past. Tuakana Nepe investigates Kaupapa Māori through links to whānau and consequently whakapapa. Nepe extends whakapapa beyond Māori colonial history and our desires of self-determination.31 Nepe explains that Kaupapa Māori is about how we see the world and the way in which we organize ourselves within it.32 Whakapapa can also be viewed in this sense, the multitude of influences and connections that need consideration and understanding when whakapapa is at the forefront of research. Like Kaupapa Māori, whakapapa is the conceptualization of Māori knowledge, it is a way of abstracting knowledge, reflecting on it, and acknowledging it. In the context of design and research, the primary focus of whakapapa is the acknowledgement of others according to the kawa of their area. Whakapapa is also the aspiration to explore and expand upon Māori knowledge and multidisciplinary practices.

Investigation framework As a result of our research, we developed a five-part framework for the investigation of wharenui construction based on Indigenous knowledges and research methodologies.

STAGE 1: PRELIMINARY APPROACH AND COLLABORATION To start the wharenui assessments, we contacted marae representatives with a brief description detailing the research project and intention plus an introduction to the research team. This early introduction phase allowed for potential whakapapa and whakawhanaungatanga (establishing relationships) connections between the research team and iwi. If a marae showed interest in our research project, we would provide further information and encouraged the marae representative to take their time in consulting with the rest of their rūnanga (board, trustees) and wider whānau iwi members. We understood that this decision was not up to an individual and affected the entire iwi group as the marae is a rightfully shared space. The research team also found the process of wider iwi whānau consultation reassuring, as it meant that the majority, if not all of the rūnanga were in agreement with their decision. It kept the kaupapa accountable.

42 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

STAGE 2: COORDINATE MARAE VISIT At this stage we began establishing marae involvement and coordinating site visits for the research team. Because of reasons such as renovations, whare closures, uncertain availability and Covid-19 precautions protecting kaumātua (elderly), some marae understandably declined further involvement in our project. For the marae that were interested we began coordinating a date and time for our research team to visit their marae. Full authority was given to the rūnanga (committee) to determine who would be present on the day of our visit as we were grateful for any knowledge and history shared surrounding their wharenui. Each marae had discussions within their iwi and rūnanga regarding who would be present when we visit, likely a group of whānau accompanied by a kaumātua (elder) who had extensive knowledge of the whare, marae and history. Availability and the type of engagement the marae wanted to have were discussed internally before confirmation with the research team. Next we discussed the appropriate kawa and tikanga that the marae might wish to practice for us as manuhiri (visitors). As tikanga and kawa varied between marae in the same region, we had protocols to follow that ranged from a traditional pōwhiri, to whakatau (welcoming), to an informal kanohi ki te kanohi greeting at the entrance. Some marae saw us manuhiri and others as researchers. Regardless, we followed the lead of the marae, as this is their tapu. Stage 2 was the last stage we were able to enact before Covid-19 lockdown limitations restricted our pre-planned marae visits and assessments. Thus, this framework draws on both the outcomes of the initial communication with marae before Covid-19 limitations and our research methodology findings. To ensure that this research project upheld the value and respect of traditional Māori knowledge sharing practices, we had initially planned to meet with a selection of marae whānau (extended families) kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face) at their marae sites. A physical presence on-site also provides a deeper understanding of the whare structures and a connected interview process with the marae whānau. Although the information required from the marae visits and interviews could have been shared digitally via email and video calls, this contact method would have been culturally disconnected and misinformed, and not afford the marae and their whānau the mana (respect) deserved. The scope for the current phase of the research project was shifted to focus more deeply on the project’s methodology for understanding and approaching kaupapa Māori research, marae and Māori communities.

STAGE 3: MARAE VISIT, ASSESSMENT AND INTERVIEW This section of the framework was derived from our own lived experiences with marae to form an understanding of how we envisioned the marae visit to ensue. Each marae would have pre-determined their welcoming tikanga for our group to readily prepare. If a pōwhiri were to take place, we would provide koha at the appropriate time during this process, and if an informal welcoming were to happen, we planned to give koha at the end of the visit. To start the assessment, we would encourage the marae participants to guide the kōrero (discussion). Our interview schedule and pre-planned questions would be used as a reference tool, but we wanted the marae whānau to tell us about their marae the way they saw it. We know some questions may be answered directly, while others would be navigated differently, and ultimately hoped for a natural conversation between the research team and marae participant/s. During the marae observations and walk through of the whare, notes would be taken as the marae representatives continue to share further valuable information in a more natural and informal discussion. At the end of the assessment, we would express gratitude and appreciation to the marae whānau for their valuable time and knowledge shared and collectively discuss their aspirations for this project’s outcome and how they found the process. If appropriate, we would end the visit with a karakia whakamutunga (closing

Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui 43

prayer) led traditionally by the marae whānau. A research team member could also conduct the karakia whakamutunga, should the marae allow it, and if a research member prepared to do so.

STAGE 4: DOCUMENTATION Our next step would be to compile all information from the marae visit where we would send a copy of the information back to the marae for their records and possible further comment. After the assessment was complete, we would maintain communications and relationships with the marae, and where relevant ask further questions or for permissions for further use and publishing of this information.

STAGE 5: REFLECTION ‘Titiro whakamuri, kōkiri whakamua. Look back and reflect, so you can move forward’ – Māori proverb

Whakapapa is not about having conversations, it is having conversations through relationships. Whakapapa is made visible through conversations and is not a singular methodology because it has various voices. Though our engagement with each marae was limited due to Covid-19 restrictions, each experience was uniquely different. Initially, the focus for this project was on marae assessments; however, it naturally evolved into an assessment of our practice. Being critical of our practice ensures this discourse remains relevant. A review by the marae is necessary to reflect on where our relationship currently sits. It is a form of accountability between academia and a part of te ao Māori. Growing knowledge through reflection by maintaining a whakapapa of kaupapa Māori and tikanga Māori practices.

Whakataunga: Conclusion Mā te kimi ka kite, Mā te kite ka mōhio, Mā te mōhio ka mārama Seek and discover, Discover and know, Know and become enlightened – Māori proverb, author unknown

Our research team reflected on known and new knowledge surrounding Māori architecture and engineering, tikanga and research processes, thereby developing our Māori framework for the continuation of this study post-Covid 19. The research team identified as culturally appropriate and ethical methodologies and practices for this research. Some practices are tikanga Māori, which are widely practised in marae settings currently. This research has touched on kawa’s locality and how that kawa determines proceedings that dictate relationships. Whakapapa is the acknowledgement of others under the kawa of the area. Relationships are a subjective methodology that can only be studied through reflection. Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past.

The multiplicity of our relationships is reflective of the vast variations within our environment. Every environment, place and kawa has its own methodology. It is the relationships we form and keep that rematerialize the aspirations of Indigenous architecture. Because of Covid-19, the relationships formed were limited to emails and phone calls: ehara te kanohi kite kanohi (not in person).

44 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

Central to this project is the acknowledgement of marae, iwi and whānau members to guide the communications, marae visit and interview processes based on the marae’s kawa. Reciprocity, however, is important. Even as researchers that have had a lived experience within te ao Māori, we are aware that in research settings it is common to be taking more than we are giving. From experience, one way to start addressing this is in understanding the depth of our gained knowledge to further develop our expertise for future kaupapa Māori works. Whakapapa ebbs and flows and is continually shifting. It is a multidisciplinary kaupapa. Indigenous architecture is always shifting, as more voices become visible through conversation. Our research and design practices should be reflective of these changes. As generations of Māori become more familiar with navigation, the waters of research and design practices, the information will naturally change. What we have in this chapter is a small part of the whakapapa moving forward. This research has helped to create a space for Māori voices through whakapapa. We would like to acknowledge our whānau, as well as the voices that have come before us in this space. We are but one star within the universe.

Glossary Aotearoa New Zealand Atua deity, god Hākari feast, food display Hapū subtribe Harirū shake hands Hawaiki ancient homeland Hongi to press noses in greeting Iwi tribe Kaikōrero speaker Kaitiaki caregiver, guardianship Kanohi ki te kanohi face to face Karakia prayer Karakia Whakamutunga closing prayer Karanga to call, calling Kaumātua elderly, elder Kaupapa subject, theme, topic Kaupapa Māori māori subject/approach Kāuta kitchen Kawa marae customs Kete basket Koha gift, offering Kōhanga nursery Kōrero discussion Mahau Verandah Mana prestige, authority Manuhiri guests, visitors Māori Indigenous person of Aotearoa

Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui 45

Marae courtyard complex of whare Mātauranga knowledge Maunga mountain Ngā pluralize O of Papatūānuku earth mother Pātaka raised storehouse Pepeha order of introduction Pou Tokomanawa centre pole Pōwhiri welcoming ceremony Ranginui sky father Rūaumoko god of earthquakes Tāhuhu ridge pole Tangata Whenua local people, hosts Tangihanga funeral Tapu sacred, restricted Te the Te Ao Māori the Māori Worldview Te Ao Mārama the world of light Te Reo Māori the Māori language Tikanga correct procedure, practice Tikanga Māori Māori practice Tūpuna ancestors Tūrangawaewae belonging, standing Waharoa gateway, entrance Waiata song, to sing Waka canoe Whaikōrero to make a formal speech Whakapapa genealogy Whakatau welcoming Whakawhanaungatanga establish relationships Whānau extended family Whare building, house Wharepuni sleeping house Whare whakairo carved house Wharehui meeting house Wharekai dining hall Wharenui meeting house, main house on marae Wharepaku toilet, ablutions Whenua land

46 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

Notes 1. Our team is largely of Māori descent and are part of a movement to decolonize and reindigenize architectural and engineering knowledge and language. As a matter of principle, we have chosen not to italicize Te Reo Māori words in our chapter. 2. Amos Rapoport, The Mutual Interaction of People and Their Built Environment (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2011), 229–32. 3. Hiwi and Pat Tauroa, Te Marae: A Guide to Customs and Protocol (Auckland: Penguin Group, 2009), 17–18, 90. 4. Deidre Brown, ‘Māori Architecture – Whare Māori – First Māori Buildings’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, accessed 25 September 2020, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/Māori-architecture-whare-Māori/page-1 5. Ambrosia Crum, Deidre Brown, Tūmanako Fa’aui, Naomi Vallis and Jason Ingham, ‘Seismic Retrofitting of Māori Wharenui in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Philosophical Transactions, The Royal Society Publishing, A 377: 20190003 (2019): 13, http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2019.0003 6. Crum, Brown, Fa’aui, Vallis and Ingham, ‘Seismic Retrofitting’. 7. Hirini Moko Mead, Tikanga Māori: Living by Māori values (Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2003), 47. 8. M. P. K. Sorenson, Māori Origins and Migrations: The Genesis of Some Pakeha Myths and Legends (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1979), 14. 9. Deidre Brown, Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond (Auckland: Penguin Group, 2009), 24–7. 10. Elizabeth Grant, Kelly Greenop, Albert L. Refiti and Daniel J. Glenn (ed.), The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 120 11. Mead, Tikanga Māori, 101, 110. 12. Spencer Lilley, The Marae as an Information Ground (Massey University, 2005), 9–10. Available online: https:// www.academia.edu/32694042/The_Marae_as_an_information_ground (accessed 23 June 2023). 13. Crum, Brown, Fa’aui, Vallis and Ingham, ‘Seismic Retrofitting’, 7–8. ‘Managing Earthquake-Prone Buildings’, Building Performance, accessed 23 September 2020, https://www.building.govt.nz/managing-buildings/ managing-earthquake-prone-buildings/. 14. Cleve Barlow, Tikanga Whakaaro: Key Concepts in Māori Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 176–81. 15. Crum, Brown, Fa’aui, Vallis and Ingham, ‘Seismic Retrofitting’, 7. 16. A. H. McLintock, ‘Traditional Social Structure’, Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, accessed 23 September 2020, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/1966/Māori-social-structure/page-2. 17. Paul Meredith, ‘Urban Māori – Urbanisation’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, published 8 February 2005, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/urban-Māori/page–1. 18. Darren N. T. King, James Goff and Apanui Skipper, ‘Māori Environmental Knowledge and Natural Hazards in Aotearoa-New Zealand’, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 37, no. 2 (2007): 61–8. DOI: 10.1080/03014220709510536 19. ‘Managing Earthquake–Prone Buildings’. 20. Crum, Brown, Fa’aui, Vallis and Ingham, ‘Seismic Retrofitting’, 12–13. 21. Rev. Māori Marsden, The Woven Universe: Selected Writings of Rev. Māori Marsden (The Estate of Rev. Māori Marsden, 2003), 2–6. 22. Tauroa, Te Marae, 41–4. 23. Mead, Tikanga Māori, 123–4. 24. Massey University, Cultural Guidelines Handbook (Massey University), accessed 23 September 2020, https://www. massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/Māori%20Students/pdfs/Māori%20Cultural%20Guidelines%20Handbook%20 for%20Powhiri%20and%20Mihi%20Whakatau.pdf?CA1656E233C8C9DBB6FFFAC91F14309B. 25. Tauroa, Te Marae, 54–89.

Te Whakapapa o ngā Wharenui 47

26. Barlow, Tikanga Whakaaro, 99–100. 27. Te Kawenata o Rata, https://www.nzia.co.nz/about-us/te-kawenata-o–rata. 28. Barlow, Tikanga Whakaaro, 48–50. 29. Ibid., 8–17. 30. Ibid. 31. Tuakana Mate Nepe, ‘Te Toi Huarewa Tipuna: Kaupapa Māori, An Educational Intervention System’ (Masters Thesis, University of Auckland, 1991), 4. 32. Ibid., 4–5.

48 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

3

‘Tropical architecture’: Cultural collisions and reverberations in the vernacular of Aotearoa New Zealand



JACQUELINE MCINTOSH AND BRUNO MARQUES

Introduction Aotearoa New Zealand has a unique relationship with the tropics. At the outskirts of the tropical Pacific, it was initially discovered by the great ocean exploring Māori/Polynesians, who would later return to become the first people to occupy the country, and as such, became the Indigenous people. The most recent archaeological data places a sudden wave of migration leading to the settlement of areas of both the North and South Islands of Aotearoa New Zealand between 1230 and 1290 AD.1 Following the initial discovery, the arrival of ‘the Great Fleet’ occurred around 1350 AD. From the inclusion of extended family groups and supplies for planting numerous crop types, it is assumed that this was a planned migration to a known location.2 The specific location of the landings established the link to the land and the name of the original waka (canoes) became their beginning, connecting them from their place of origin in the Pacific to their place of starting in Aotearoa New Zealand. Most Māori tie their lineage back to these first landings. Five centuries later, Aotearoa New Zealand was next colonized in the 1800s with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (Te tiriti o Waitangi ) in 1840, wherein the British maintained that it had become a colony under British rule and adopted the British legal system, which forms part of the Aotearoa New Zealand constitution today. While the estimated size of the Māori population at the time of Captain Cook’s discovery for the British has been much debated, it has not moved far from Cook’s early estimates of 100,000 people.3 However, introduced disease, war and disruption saw this population drop to an estimated 40,000 individuals on the North Island and only 2,000 individuals on the South Island by 1886. In contrast, immigration from the UK saw Pākehā (non-Māori) numbers swell from 2,000 to 670,000 by the end of the nineteenth century.4 For many, the decision to migrate carried the expectation of a new and better life in, what was for them, a comparatively ‘tropical’ location.5 In the current postcolonial era, with the political thrust for a decolonized Aotearoa New Zealand, the myth that a dominant culture can monopolize the process of modernization is under challenge. At the  same time, capitalism, increasing globalization, rapid technological change and unprecedented migration are blurring boundaries between countries, cultures and places. Architecturally, new forms of vernacular architecture are developing, converging and colliding. This chapter adds to the discourse on Polynesian migration to Aotearoa New Zealand and the implications for housing and spatial settlement. It examines the housing implications on health and well-being for a largely collectively oriented, pre-capitalist people from the tropics who relocated to a larger island, located in a more temperate climate zone. It considers the vernacular architecture related to each wave of migration and establishes how various Polynesian migrants and migrant communities adapted to life in Aotearoa New Zealand, both before and

after colonization and how the shift from the tropics to a cooler climate influenced both them and the built environment. An examination of the vernacular architecture is used to reveal cultural practices that influence the use of the built form.

The role of the vernacular There are numerous definitions of vernacular architecture. Amos Rapoport defines vernacular architecture as ‘[a] lack of theoretical or aesthetic pretensions; working with the site and microclimate; respect for other people and their houses and hence for the total environment, man-made as well as natural; and working within an idiom with variations within a given order’.6 This description implies that vernacular architecture, by its definition, is located in place, which includes the people who use a particular built environment, and the histories and customs of those people. Valverde argues that essentially vernacular architecture is ‘ … an Indigenous building style method using local materials and traditional methods of construction and ornamentation’.7 Ozkan defines vernacularism as a ‘building tradition that has existed and excelled over centuries’,8 a definition that is resonant with that of Bernard Rudofsky, who argued that ‘ … vernacular architecture does not go through fashion cycles. It is nearly immutable, indeed, unimprovable, since it serves its purpose to perfection’.9 While each scholar refines an element of the definition, all agree that vernacular is a category of structures that have evolved as a direct long-term adaptation to the local environmental, social, cultural, technological and historical contexts; vernacular architecture refers to the built environment that has been constructed without a conventional architects’ intervention.10 Vernacular architecture can thereby play a determining part in understanding places best suited for specific cultures and those elements that are required to provide a good quality of life where its inhabitants can reach fulfilment.11 However, by many it has been seen as relatively static, resistant to change and lacking modern relevance.12 On the contrary, deeply dependent to the building of and by the people, the study of vernacular architecture offers rich, dynamic, multi-faceted and progressive insights. This extends to consideration of the diverse environments, economies, technologies, social structures, belief systems and symbolism, as well as the many other aspects that contribute to the built forms of different cultures.13 Traditional settlements offer valuable understandings of the interaction between human behaviour with the built form overtime.14 Their influences extend from spatial settlement patterns through to housing and landscape design and offer important views of the complexity of planning for forthcoming generations as well as cultural adaptation from immigration. The collisions of culture reverberate through the vernacular and reveal the modernization of culture. Migrant flows have significant impact on the way our urban living spaces are designed, spaces which still exist today. However, what these spaces do not tell us is about their suitability and their impacts on the health and well-being of their residents. Cultural anthropologists have written about the relationship between space and people, as a mutually dependent one.15 Building from this premise, others argue for an integrated approach to the way we analyse and design spaces, stating that the relationship between social organizations and dwelling spaces is embedded in and influenced by the larger socio-cultural systems.16 All of which can be better understood by an in-depth examination of the vernacular within its cultural context. Herein two historic vernacular housing types are explored, building on evidence from the literature, photographs and users’ testimony, to generate a foundational understanding of cultural practices and vernacular architecture as a cultural response. Following which, an emerging typology is examined through field investigation, observation and the literature to interrogate the vernacular in a contemporary context.

50 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

The pre-colonial raupō house Western knowledge of the history of Māori vernacular architecture prior to colonization is limited. Archaeological evidence from fourteenth-century sites shows that Māori lived in whānau-based kāinga (family villages) near food rich rivers, beaches and forests17 and that dwellings were rectangular in shape and resembled those of their former homes in Polynesia. Very little early Māori housing in its original form exists today except for a few remnants that have been preserved in museums. Most of Western knowledge follows from Captain Cook’s first landing, where extensive notes were taken, followed by descriptions in settler accounts, or captured in photographs.18 The raupō (reed) house was likely the first housing constructed in Aotearoa New Zealand by immigrants from the Pacific (Figure 3.1) as there is little archaeological evidence to suggest any other dwelling type.19 The raupō ‘house’ was not a house in the sense of the traditional Western house. Māori lived communally in family-based kāinga (villages) or pā. The activities of dwelling were decentralized and took place in a series of buildings. Māori slept in wharepuni (sleeping houses), which were made of timber, rushes, tree ferns and bark, with a thatched roof and earth floors. Cooking and eating in the wharepuni were considered tapu (sacred) and not permitted as there were separate buildings for these activities, with kauta (cooking houses) for preparing and cooking collective meals, pātaka (storehouses for food and taonga, treasures) for storing food and valuables, and wharenui (meeting houses) for socializing20 (Figure 3.1). The wharepuni were carefully designed for warmth and comfort. Most were constructed of raupō (Typha orientalis), a swamp plant from the same family as bulrush,21 which ‘were bunched together, thatched or sowed into rows. The stems repelled water and provided a useful level of thermal insulation’.22 In fact, the thermal performance of the typical 150 mm raupō wall achieves compliance and exceeds the energy efficiency requirements of the modern New Zealand Building Code (NZBC).23 Some had earth banked up against the walls, presumably to eliminate draughts. Roofs were gabled with a sloping pitch. Inside there was a single space with a central passage and hearth, with sleeping places lining either side. The solid rammed-earth floors were sunken and made hard and compact by repeated uses,24 a technique regarded internationally as ‘the poor man’s stone’.25 This flooring treatment is consistent with Indigenous architecture

Fig. 3.1  Left: an example of raupō wharepuni. Source: Burton Brothers, 1868–1898 (Firm, Dunedin). Photographs of New Zealand scenes. Ref: PAColl-4751-07. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Right: Māori pataka. Source: Schmidt, Herman John, 1872–1959. Portrait and landscape negatives, Auckland district. Ref: 1/1001883-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

‘Tropical Architecture’, Aotearoa 51

around the world and is assumed to be sunken so as to clear away any organic material that might rot, to facilitate compaction for ease of cleaning and for thermal comfort. Culturally, the raupō buildings represented an entire philosophy and set of attitudes about building. The raupō house was in essence a sustainable living organism, created from easily accessible plant materials, which were harvested so as not to jeopardize the source plant and assembled without requiring any specialized equipment or technology. They were designed to be warm and comfortable until they required replacement at which time the dwelling would be rebuilt or allowed to naturally decompose. Possessions were limited and could be easily hung in baskets from surrounding walls. The wharepuni were used primarily for sleeping, so apertures to the outside were not essential. Typically, the house had a single-width low doorway and a small window adjacent to the door to allow occupants to see out. The heated central hearth was surrounded by sleeping family members, rarely unattended. As a building type, the raupō house had been successful so as not to require major modification for the 300 years of known Māori occupation in Aotearoa New Zealand.26

Occupation of the raupō house following migration of European people to Aotearoa New Zealand When the first European settlers arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, they lived either in or near Māori settlements. In terms of building performance, it has been noted that ‘when the Māori and Europeans first met, it was Māori who had the most desirable dwellings’.27 Settlers typically followed the advice from Brett’s Colonists’ Guide and built ‘first a temporary house – this is often built with raupō walls and a nikau framework’.28 In fact, most raupō houses were actually built by Māori for settlers, who were to report that the raupō house could be ‘ … built to some size, are very warm, and when divided into appartments [rooms or compartments] and furnished with floors, doors and windows, are extremely comfortable. They will last with very little repair for three years and their price varies according to size and finish from 30 shillings to 5 pounds’.29 In comparison, ‘good weather boarded cottages of kauri [Agathis australis] containing two apartments, can be built for 50 pounds’.30 Raupō buildings were also used as churches and even by the colonial authorities for official use. For example, in 1850 in Onehunga, a raupō building was used to replace the existing wooden police station which was seriously leaking.31 To accommodate Western cultural ways of living, rather than maintaining a central hearth surrounded by sleeping areas, the settler houses typically installed a large chimney placed on one end or side of the house for heating and installed wooden flooring over the rammed earth floor.32 Unlike the Māori separation of function by building, the settlers lived in smaller nuclear families where all activities were undertaken in a single building, including cooking, eating, sleeping and socializing.33 Small windows with wooden shutters were typically punched into the walls for greater access to natural light and ventilation (Figure  3.3). The multi-purpose nature of these houses, where occupants slept, ate and socialized, distinguished them from the Māori whare (house), which had prescribed functions according to type.34 The raupō houses fell from grace when families with different cultural practices attempted to occupy them. The use of candles for lighting and indoor cooking posed hazards that had not been experienced by Māori in the whare. Settlers were cautioned on the use of fire, as ‘they [the raupō houses] ignite like tinder and are burned to the ground in a few minutes’35 and advised that it was advisable to have the cooking house at some distance from the main building and to have a good stone chimney. The addition of extra windows increased opportunities for water penetration and draughts. The introduction of food and water into the dwellings, as opposed to storing food centrally high above the ground, came with problems in

52 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

Fig. 3.2  Left: settler’s sitting space outside a raupō house in Taranaki. Source: ‘Raupo whare, Taranaki’. Parihaka album 1. Ref: PA1-q-183-25-2. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. Right: timber settler’s cottage, 1860, location unknown. Source: National Library of New Zealand.

Fig. 3.3  Left: post-Second World War state house. Source: Archives New Zealand. Right: semi-detached house in Otara, built in 1947. Source: author’s image.

maintaining hygiene and pest control. And the broader expectation of housing durability conflicted with the temporal nature of the building materials. Notions of sleeping on the ground were culturally problematic and by the 1880s suspended timber floors were expected in European settler houses, claiming concerns of moisture control and buildings in a dirty and unwholesome state.36 In contrast, Māori houses continued with solid-earth flooring, finding that original unfloored dwelling houses, when situated upon a high, dry and well-drained site, were immeasurably superior to the same type of dwelling, where insufficient attention was paid to subsoil drainage.37 The beginning of the end of the raupō house was signalled with an Ordinance enacted by the Governor of New Zealand with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council, entitled ‘an Ordinance to impose a Tax upon Raupō Houses’. These dwellings, which cost between 5 and 12 pounds to construct new, could now be taxed 20 pounds for any building in a town, which sanctioned the ordinance and 100 pounds for building within the town boundaries – ‘no person shall erect or cause to be erected any such building as aforesaid, in any Town in which the provisions of this Ordinance shall be declared to be in forced, and that

‘Tropical Architecture’, Aotearoa 53

every person shall, for so offending, forfeit and pay the sum of one hundred pounds’.38 Censuses found that the number of raupō houses fell from 630 in 1861 to 23 in 1911; however, it is important to note that Māori dwellings were not included in these censuses.39 While raupō houses were to endure in rural areas for some time, they had fallen from national favour. The lack of cultural fit for the colonists, focused their dissatisfaction on this housing typology, with concerns of health and safety. In their place, prefabricated wooden houses were shipped from Australia, followed by the design and construction of relatively simple new Western-style timber houses that were still relatively economical and easy to construct (Figure 3.2).

The new colonial ‘state house’ ‘By the 1870’s, the basic structure of the New Zealand house was largely established’,40 heralding the advent of a new New Zealand housing vernacular. Characterized by its timber-framing, weather-board cladding, corrugated-iron roofing and its stand-alone nature designed for nuclear family living, this informal ‘state house’ was to become the new image of New Zealand housing. Constructed with principles of economy and utility, and using standardized systems of construction, minor modifications were introduced to create variety while maintaining standard components (Figure 3.2). Most featured a rectangular shape with a centrally located doorway and windows on either side. While some houses only had one or two rooms, others had a central hallway, dividing the house interior into two halves with a formal lounge on one side and an area for dining. Bedrooms were located on the other side with a kitchen located at the rear of the house, often in a lean-to addition. Houses grew in size from the late 1870s, adopting new villa styles and becoming less and less affordable for the average householder.41 Many early settlers could not afford their own homes, so some rented; however, many of these rental properties were to become slums and the government had little option but to build state rental housing to offer tenants some security. The first state house was opened in Wellington in 1937 and heralded a new age of New Zealand housing. At the end of the Second World War, 10,000 state houses a year were being built by the Government, including the development of entire suburbs with shops and other amenities (Figure 3.3). However, by 1957, concerns with mitigating the economic costs of sprawl resulted in the introduction of policies which required that first 25 per cent and then later 50 per cent of new state houses be multi-unit. The most typical housing type for this initiative was the two-storey semi-detached model shown in Figure  3.3 (right). By the early 1950s, this new housing was built in higher densities, with mass state housing areas emerging in south Auckland and Porirua, north of Wellington.42 The necessity for government construction of housing was much debated by successive governments, finally resulting in the divestiture of much of its state housing portfolio by the late 1990s. Many of the detached state houses which had been built with quality materials in well-designed neighbourhoods had become attractive to the public for ownership. The government retained a reduced number for those people on welfare43; however, the housing that remained was the least desirable and state housing had become the housing for the poor. Three key design decisions based on the achievement of maximum economy made many of the forms clearly identifiable.44 The roof pitch was as low as possible, often as low as 13 degrees, to reduce material costs; the economical rectangular shape characterized many of the dwellings, and the repetition of units saved on administrative costs while ensuring ease of mass buildability. The interiors featured the walled separation of kitchen, dining area and lounge with three bedrooms designed for a nuclear family with Western conventional sleeping arrangements to a maximum of five occupants. Bedrooms had limited or, in some cases, no closet space and a separate WC plus a bathroom with a bathtub and sink was the most common arrangement. The laundry was typically located outside.

54 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

Occupation of the state house following the migration of Pacific peoples to Aotearoa New Zealand Migrant communities face many difficulties adapting to life in a new country. The late migration story of Pacific peoples from the tropics, predominantly Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, to temperate Aotearoa New Zealand is well-documented.45 The largest wave followed the Second World War when people from the Pacific territories were encouraged to migrate to Aotearoa New Zealand to meet the labour shortages and for more and better opportunities, a trend that has continued to contemporary times.46 Their main areas of settlement were those parts of South Auckland, Porirua and the Hutt Valley in neighbourhoods with the higher density semi-detached state housing. The housing was situated on the outskirts of industrial areas, which were thought to offer employment opportunities for the residents.47 Many migrants began in labour jobs, which were relatively low-paying and often supporting extended families as well as sending money back to their home communities in various Pacific Islands. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, economic recession led to high levels of unemployment and housing overcrowding. Even without the pressures of recession, the state housing designed for the lifestyles and cultural norms of the Pākehā or Europeans was not well suited to the larger and more fluid Pasifika domestic units.48 In 2018, Pasifika peoples comprised 8.1 per cent of the total population49 and were projected to grow to make up  10 per cent of the total population by 2026.50 The influence of Pasifika peoples on both architecture and cultural change in Aotearoa New Zealand is deemed to be more significant than that which occurs in the immigrants’ home islands.51 However, in Aotearoa New Zealand they are the most socio-economically disadvantaged group.52 In the 2018 Census, almost half of all Pasifika families lived in households that they shared with other families or individuals compared to 17 per cent of NZ as a whole.53 Proportionally more of the people living in these households were children. Shared housing is the norm in the Pacific, so shared housing is a natural survival strategy. Pasifika cultural rules of hospitality require that members of the family, extended family and friends who come to stay are never turned away. This often leads to overcrowding as the number of people in a dwelling expands and contracts. It is not uncommon for twenty people to occupy a single, two- or three-bedroom dwelling. The people move often. For example, in the 2018 census, only half of the Pasifika population had lived in the same household for three or more years and 26 per cent had been there less than one year.54 Because of the importance of the collective, of the ‘village’ – particularly to community events such as birthdays and White Sunday55 – some Polynesian communities have adapted their celebrations according to the limited space afforded to them by housing. The stresses of life and the impact of distance in a much larger multi-cultural metropolitan setting have had detrimental effects on the families. In the Islands, Pasifika have support systems and children can roam freely. However, in Aotearoa New Zealand, they talk of being in isolation: ‘You have your own home and other members of your family, but you don’t have the same tight network when extended families may be living in the same rough area, but not in the same dwelling.’56 Similarly, social arrangements that worked in the island locations, such as Women’s committees which would support and regulate the behaviours of new families, no longer held sway. One important way in which tropical Pasifika cultural practices have adapted to temperate architecture design for a nuclear family is through the creative adaptation of space. Families built garages in order to provide flexible space that can be used for visiting family members or extended family members to stay in, but also to accommodate activities that go beyond the typical family activities that might ordinarily take place in the lounge or living area of a home. Macpherson explains that these spaces have at times been adapted for uses such as a faletama (an unmarried men’s quarter); a fale sa (a home for newly congregated

‘Tropical Architecture’, Aotearoa 55

church groups), along with other functions.57 This flexibility of the garage has enabled the practice and continuity of forms of social organization and reproduction of Pasifika culture and tradition. Regrettably, the state house has not been conducive to the well-being of Pasifika people. The kitchens are not big enough to cook for larger groups. There are not sufficient areas within the house to share meals. In the Pacific, the preparation and cooking of fish is generally undertaken outdoors; however, outdoor cooking facilities are generally not available in the state house. Many Pasifika see the size of the state house as a key problem since it does not have enough room for grandparents as well as for parents and children. For Pasifika families, the openness of traditional houses with constant air flow was a key attribute of housing. The open plan could both accommodate grandparents and grandchildren in the cooking area; it allowed for surveillance and the ventilation assured a constant flow of fresh air as well as the sensation of air movement on the skin. These affordances are not possible in the New Zealand state house, where the building is divided into very small enclosed rooms, with closed doors. The issue of enclosed rooms with large numbers of occupants means that often children do not get a good sleep due to the number of people in the same room and hence they may not perform well at school. The closed design of rooms leads to not only physical problems but also social problems where illicit sexual relationships are more easily conducted behind shut doors.58 Children are no longer as easily monitored as they would be in an open home and rules of engagement and privacy, which in the Pacific Islands were regulated by housing affordances,59 are very different in Aotearoa New Zealand. The state house has also been implicated in the ill-health of Pasifika families. For financial reasons, many Pasifika are dependent upon rental housing. There are many stories of problems with the state houses that make the dwellings not only unhealthy, but unsafe. Aotearoa New Zealand Statistics synthesized a report based on survey findings in 2015, which found that approximately half of renters reported issues with dampness or mould compared with one-quarter of home-owners.60 Furthermore, Pasifika peoples were the ethnic group most likely to report cold and dampness problems.61 The report also found that 15 per cent reported a major dampness problem and 43 per cent stated that they were always or often cold.62 There are numerous studies which have linked respiratory illnesses with housing conditions. Tukuitonga and Finau argued that housing conditions, among other things, are contributing to many of the health problems experienced by Pacific peoples.63 Over the past decade, there has been growing concern about the relationship between overcrowding and epidemic rise as a number of communicable diseases and in particular respiratory diseases have been linked to overcrowding.64 The largely uninsulated Aotearoa New Zealand state houses combined with the cold and wet winters lead to excessively cool indoor temperatures, which are related to the mortality of older Pacifika people.65

Perceptions and collisions This chapter does not intend to comprehensively traverse cultural histories, it merely seeks to make two important points. First, culture is not compartmentalized into a single area of life but is rather a way of living. Second, village-based communities are the integral Pasifika social unit which raises the significance of community buildings and environments. Pasifika communal building and structures typically include a community centre, which provides a gathering place for rituals, ceremonial or entertainment purposes and provides a base for social, recreational and traditional activities, among other features. In the Pacific Islands, these buildings are usually located at the very centre of the village, acting as a core that gathers people and fosters socialization with the houses clustered around the periphery. The concept of a community hub is crucial to the cultural sustainability of these groups, and for Māori, this can be seen embedded in the range

56 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

Fig. 3.4  Prototyping the Pasifika state house, Porirua, 2000. Source: John Gray, architect.

of marae-based (communal or sacred places) housing solutions proposed to address contemporary Māori cultural realities and whānau (extended family) dynamics. The term ‘marae’ not only refers to the physical complex of buildings but accommodates also the human and spiritual connections that provide a person with tūrangawaewae, or a place of standing, as well as with a sense of belonging and identity.66 Pre-colonial and pre-capitalist housing was developed with the efficient use of easily accessible materials as a place to rest and socialize and presumably be protected from the dangers of climate. Durability was not a consideration. For the Western dwellers of Aotearoa New Zealand, the house was a place of both rest and an investment, where the value of the modern house has become partly disconnected from its use. In the last eighty-five years, the houses available to migrants in New Zealand have been designed for and suited to small, nuclear family units with a generally stable composition. By comparison, Pasifika families are typically larger extended units with a constantly changing composition, and comprising groups which are tightly affiliated with and involved in activities connected with the village of origin, extended kinship group and church congregations.67 Historically, most Indigenous or vernacular distinctive architectural types resulted from an uneven supply of basic building materials,68 and for the raupō house, the most abundant of materials were plant fibres, which traditionally formed the walls and roofs of most Pacific houses. However, for the state house vernacular, the distinctive architectural style resulted from the Western culture and the new economy imported by the colonists. While the traditional raupō architecture and methods of construction were cheaper and more sustainable, capitalism and the new materialism required greater levels of enclosure and security for possessions, which in turn required different building materials, such as glass in windows, more secure wall construction as well as heating, cooling and more recently desires for other technologies such as internet and satellite access. Macpherson notes that the house’s garage became a much more versatile space in which some of the shortcomings in Western house design could be addressed.69 Fortunately, little official notice has been taken of the transformation of the garage into a prestige asset for a Pasifika household. There is a well-established tradition of detached and semi-detached buildings associated with houses in New Zealand (garages, tool sheds, garden sheds, playhouses) but little notice was taken of these until a disastrous accident (such as death following fire)70 (Figure 3.4). The use of typically non-residential buildings and structures for additional accommodation is one example of ‘good practice’ in overcoming limitations of culture-bound

‘Tropical Architecture’, Aotearoa 57

housing styles, without offending local conventions and, for the most part, covenants. New forms of hybrid vernacular are currently emerging in response to this collision. One example is the common use of the garage (or small out-building) for additional sleeping space, another is the addition of leased ‘rooms’ which are trucked on site and removed when no longer required. Lindsay Asquith and Marcel Vellinga, significant researchers of vernacular architecture, advocate the concept of a contemporary hybrid vernacular architecture.71 ‘Hybridisation speaks of truly vernacular traditions where none are seen as static, isolated or homogeneous components of history. Over time, outside influences like technology, use, resources or form are incorporated into existing building traditions, where traditional and modern elements come together in creating a hybrid vernacular in its own distinctive way.’72 In Aotearoa New Zealand, at this current time, vernacular ‘reverberations’ can be seen as a cultural response to inappropriate housing. For Māori, with the settlement of land claims and the resurgence of Māori identity, iwi (tribes) are introducing new long-term housing typologies and ways of constructing. Iwi-led development and innovation are increasingly addressing Māori desires for an alternative to Western style development.

A new vernacular? Papakāinga Responding to the inappropriateness of the state house for extended families and to cultural imperatives for living practices, Māori are now building sustainable papakāinga (communal housing) to support their aspirations for self-determination. For example, the Te Matapihi he Tirohanga mō te Iwi Trust was established in 2011 to advocate for Māori housing interests at a national level, to offer an independent voice for the Māori housing sector, to assist in Māori housing policy development at central and local government levels, and to support the growth of the sector by providing advice, facilitating collaboration and sharing high-quality resources and information. Seeking to alleviate the significant health inequities experienced by collective Pasifika families in state houses, Māori envisioned ‘a thriving home, he kāinga ora, as essential to achieving and maintaining whānau well-being. “Mana kāinga” is about whānau having the power to choose, influence and create their home environment’.73 Innovative marae-based housing typologies have been proposed by Hoskins et  al.,74 ranging from fifty-person transitional housing intended for occupation for only a few months to large intergenerational whānau kāinga (family settlements or villages) with up to nine bedrooms and large communal kitchens, dining and living areas (whare roa). In urban areas, they are reacting to the need for typologies that can respond to the often much smaller urban marae sites available, and depart from the stand-alone (or detached single) dwellings that have characterized the vast majority of marae-based papakāinga housing and kaumātua (elderly) flat developments since the mid-1960s. Current housing initiatives range from conceptual models through piloted and built prototypes to entire implemented housing schemes.75 While these new Māori housing initiatives adopt Western building materials and processes, they significantly modify housing and community layouts and dimensions. For example, plans for two- to three-storey kāinga adaptation of the terraced housing typology, with an emphasis on intergenerational and extended whānau (family) needs, include a central communal laundry, barbecue and lounge area (whare tūhono) (Figure  3.5). Similarly, emphasizing accessibility and shared lounge and kitchen areas, a two-storey building type has been designed to allows for up to twenety occupants, along with a kaitiaki whānau (family guardians) located on the lower or basement level (kāinga kaumātua).

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Fig. 3.5  The Whare Manaaki Tāngata complex [meaning house care and support for people] and courtyard proposed for Te Puea Memorial Marae in Auckland in 2019. Source: designTRIBE architects.

The Māori housing sector, which encompasses an array of housing providers from government to private Māori developers, continues to develop a range of solutions that typify housing preferences based on notions of kāinga, papakāinga and other traditional, village-style housing configurations. The greatest potential of the papakāinga model may be that it provides both an opportunity for hapū members to physically return to their ancestral land, and also enables whānau to connect (and reconnect) to the hapū and the local community on a social and cultural level, thereby re-establishing bonds that for some whānau were severed by historic land grabs and evictions seventy years ago.76

These models emphasize values such as connection to whenua (land), whakapapa (genealogy) and kaitiaki (guardianship) obligations, and intergenerational support for raising families and caring for the elderly and sick within such housing initiatives. This potentially new vernacular maintains that Māori housing should not only look and feel Māori but, most importantly, meet the functional needs of a Māori whānau and be adaptable to suit cultural practices and living arrangements. Access to warm and sheltered outdoor areas is prioritized, along with generous kitchen and bathroom facilities to cater for large whānau (family) and manuhiri (visitors). Manaakitanga (hospitality) is at the heart of Māori living and therefore any alternative housing design for Māori must prioritize being able to host both long- and short-term guests.77

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Conclusion Aotearoa New Zealand, while located in the temperate zone just beyond the tropics, has always been, geographically, part of the Pacific Islands. Its significance to the tropics is that it is one of the favoured places for Pacific Island migration and is potentially impacted by the widening of the tropical belt, not to mention climate change. While the implications of climate to vernacular architecture are widely referenced in the literature, we find less regarding the implications of culture, which we maintain is arguably more important to an understanding of the vernacular. In this chapter, vernacular designs of housing in Aotearoa New Zealand are highlighted across pre-­ colonial, colonial and postcolonial times, to illustrate how the collisions of culture with the vernacular have influenced historical and contemporary relationships and highlight the complexity of social, cultural and political negotiations between disparate stakeholders. While the imperatives of accommodating conflicting cultural orientations are enshrined in Aotearoa New Zealand’s national identity, the findings are also useful when considering the widespread migration of families with collective orientations to new individualistic countries.78 Long accepted ways of doing things migrate with individuals themselves and their cultural luggage enables them to feel comfortable in the new environment. The collisions of culture with housing are evidenced in the vernacular architecture and reveal how cultural practices influenced the built form or how the built form influences resident health and well-being. The resulting reverberations reveal the modernization of culture through the artefacts of vernacular housing. Contemporary developments in Aotearoa New Zealand show divergent trends for new vernaculars. On the one hand, new Māori housing typologies and urban forms offer compelling visions for fostering kinship and community relations. Explorations, conceptual proposals and new developments of papakāinga depict persuasive visions of the future, which are being implemented following Māori land claim developments. On the other hand, the fading dream of owning a stand-alone house with a large backyard also gives rise to a new vernacular. Here, financial imperatives, political guidelines, ethical values and social behaviour are all ingredients that influence both the new temporal vernacular architecture and the urban form. Within the physical structure of the built environment, allowing the conservation of cultural and social local mores encourages cohesion and socialization in new urban forms. In this way, the study of the vernacular allows insight into potential implications of cultural collision, as housing constructed under one cultural orientation is recycled for another and offers important foresight regarding the reverberation of a design context in a reinterpreted ‘tropics’.

Notes 1. Thomas Higham, Atholl Anderson and Chris Jacomb, ‘Dating the First New Zealanders: The Chronology of Wairau Bar’, Antiquity 73, no. 280 (1999): 421; Richard Walter, Hallie Buckley, Chris Jacomb and Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith, ‘Mass Migration and the Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand’, Journal of World Prehistory 30, no. 4 (2017): 357; Janet M. Wilmshurst, Terry L. Hunt, Carl P. Lipo and Atholl J. Anderson, ‘High-precision Radiocarbon Dating Shows Recent and Rapid Initial Human Colonization of East Polynesia’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 5 (2011): 1818. 2. Charles E. M. Pearce and F. M. Pearce, ‘Dating the Last Migration to New Zealand’, in Oceanic Migration (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 311. 3. Tom Brooking, The History of New Zealand (Westport, CO: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004), 7. 4. Statistics New Zealand, ‘New Zealand: An Urban/Rural Profile Update 2016’, accessed 7 July 2020, http://­infoshare. stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/Maps_and_geography/Geographic-areas/urban-rural-profile-update.aspx.

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5. Robert Vale and Brenda Vale, ‘Introduction: The Tropics: A Region Defined by Climate’, in Sustainable Building and Built Environments to Mitigate Climate Change in the Tropics, ed. Tri Harso Karyono, Robert Vale and Brenda Vale (Cham: Springer, 2017), 1–2. 6. Amos Rapoport, ‘The Pueblo and the Hogan’, Shelter and Society 68 (1969): 4. 7. Javier Ponce Valverde, ‘Towards a Contemporary Vernacular Architecture: The Coast Region of Ecuador’ (Master of Science diss., Texas Tech University, 2004), 21. 8. Suha Ozkan, ‘Introduction: Regionalism within Modernism’, in Regionalism in Architecture, ed. Robert Powell (Singapore: Concept media/the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985), 8. 9. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1964), fig. 1. 10. Lindsay Asquith and Marcel Vellinga, Vernacular Architecture in the 21st Century: Theory, Education and Practice (London: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 125. 11. Kingston Heath and Kingston Wm Heath, Vernacular Architecture and Regional Design: Cultural Process and Environmental Response (London: Routledge, 2009), 73. 12. Paul Memmott and John Ting, ‘Vernacular Transformations’, Fabrications 30, no. 1 (2020): 1. 13. Paul Memmott and James Davidson, ‘Exploring a Cross-cultural Theory of Architecture’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 19, no. 2 Spring (2008): 55. 14. Mohammed Abdullah Eben Saleh, ‘The Evolution of Planning & Urban Theory from the Perspective of Vernacular Design: MOMRA Initiatives in Improving Saudi Arabian Neighbourhoods’, Land Use Policy 18, no. 2 (2001): 183. 15. Amos Rapoport, The Mutual Interaction of People and Their Built Environment (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2011), 189. 16. Denise L. Lawrence and Setha M. Low, ‘The Built Environment and Spatial Form’, Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990): 457; Bruno Marques, Claire Freeman, Lynette Carter and Maibritt Pedersen Zari, ‘Sense of Place and Belonging in Developing Culturally Appropriate Therapeutic Environments: A Review’, Societies 10, no. 4 (2020): 89. 17. Ben Schrader, ‘Housing – The First Houses’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 5 September 2013, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/housing/page–1 18. Nicholas Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (London: Penguin UK, 2018), 315. 19. Tanja Poppelreuter, ‘Changing Places: New Zealand Houses by Winkler & Eisenhofer 1958 to 1969’, The Journal of Architecture 18, no. 6 (2013): 875. 20. Rawinia Higgins and John C. Moorfield, ‘Ngā tikanga o te marae: Marae practices’, in Ki te Whaiao: An Introduction to Māori Culture and Society (Auckland: Pearson Education, 2004), 77. 21. T. K. Lim, ‘Typha Orientalis’, in Edible Medicinal and Non Medicinal Plants (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 788. 22. Nigel Isaacs, ‘Going Back in Time – raupō Houses’, Build, October/November, 2005, 103. 23. Nigel Isaacs, ‘Māori Councils Act 1900: Suspending Floors’, in The Raging Fury of Edwardian Ornamentation “Meets” a Virtual Frenzy of Stylism: New Zealand Architecture in 1900s: A One Day Symposium, ed. Christine McCarthy (Wellington: Centre for Building Performance Research, 2019a), 2–3. 24. Isaacs, ‘Māori Councils Act 1900’, 3. 25. Pedro Guedes, ‘Building Materials’, in The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architecture and Technological Change (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1979), 241. 26. William John Phillipps, Maori Houses and Food Stores No. 8 (South Africa: Government Printer, 1952), 159. 27. Anne Salmond, Two Worlds: First Meetings between Maori and Europeans, 1642–1772 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 348. 28. Isaacs, ‘Going Back in Time ’, 103.

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29. Anon, First Annual Report (Auckland: Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Auckland, 1843), 18. 30. Anon, First Annual Report, 19. 31. Kristyn Harman, ‘Some Dozen Raupo Whares, and a Few Tents: Remembering Raupo Houses in Colonial New Zealand’, The Journal of New Zealand Studies 17 (2014): 42. 32. Isaacs, ‘Māori Councils Act 1900’, 3. 33. Nigel Isaacs, ‘Making the New Zealand House 1792–1982’ (PhD diss., Victoria University of Wellington, 2015), 167. 34. Ben Schrader, ‘Housing – The First Houses’. 35. Anon, First Annual Report, 22. 36. Isaacs, ‘Māori Councils Act 1900’, 3. 37. Peter Henry Buck, ‘Medicine amongst the Maoris in Ancient and Modern Times’ (PhD diss., University of Otago, 1910), 81. 38. The New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator, ‘No 248, 24 May 1843, Vol. IV’, accessed 22 August 2020, https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/new-zealand-gazette-and-wellington-spectator/1843/05/24/1. 39. Nigel Isaacs, ‘Free-Standing, Wooden, Upright: The Evolving Cladding and Structure of the New Zealand House, 1858–1981’, The Journal of New Zealand Studies NS28 (2019b): 29. 40. Isaacs, ‘Free-Standing’, 29. 41. Isaacs, ‘Making the New Zealand House’, 172. 42. Paola Leardini and Manfredo Manfredini, ‘Modern Housing Retrofit: Assessment of Upgrade Packages to EnerPHit Standard for 1940–1960 State Houses in Auckland’, Buildings 5, no. 1 (2015): 229; Richard Hill, Māori and the State: Crown-Māori Relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950–2000 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2010), 129. 43. Gael Ferguson, Building the New Zealand Dream (Wellington: Dunmore Press with the assistance of the Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1994), 129; Ben Schrader, We Call It Home: A History of State Housing in New Zealand (Dunedin: Reed Pub., 2005), 172. 44. Göran Runeson and Helen Tippett, Quality Evaluation of Residential Buildings: A Pilot Study to Develop a Method of Assessing Changes in Housing Quality in Relation to Changes in Public Housing Policy (Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, School of Architecture, 1985), 52. 45. Peggy Fairburn-Dunlop, ‘Part One: Some Markers on the Journey’, in Making Our Place: Growing Up PI in Aotearoa, ed. Peggy Fairburn-Dunlop and Gabrielle Sisifo Makisi (Wellington: Dunmore Press, 2003), 25; Cluny Macpherson, ‘From Pacific Islanders to Pacific People: The Past, Present and Future of the Pacific Population in Aotearoa’, in Tangata Tangata: The Changing Ethnic Contours of New Zealand, ed. Paul Spoonley and David George Pearson (Melbourne: Cengage Learning Australia, 2004), 151; Ilana Gershon, ‘Viewing Diasporas from the Pacific: What Pacific Ethnographies Offer Pacific Diaspora Studies’, The Contemporary Pacific 19, no. 2 (2007): 479. 46. Jared Mackley-Crump, ‘Malaga – the Journey: The Performing Arts as Motivational Tool for Pasifika Students in Aotearoa New Zealand’, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 12, no. 3 (2011): 260; David Ley, Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 108; Fairburn-Dunlop, ‘Part One: Some Markers on the Journey’, 26; Macpherson, ‘From Pacific Islanders to Pacific People’, 155. 47. Melanie Anae, ‘Papalagi Redefined: Towards a NZ-born Samoan Identity’, in Pacific Diaspora: Island Peoples in the United States and across the Pacific, ed. Paul Spickard, Joanne L. Rondilla and Debbie Hippolite Wright (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 153. 48. Cluny Macpherson, ‘A Samoan Solution to the Limitations of Urban Housing New Zealand’, in Home in the Islands: Housing and Social Change in the Pacific, ed. Jan Rensel and Margaret Rodman Critchlow (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), p. 159.

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49. Statistics New Zealand, ‘2018 Census Ethnic Group Summaries’, accessed 18 July 2020, https://www.stats. govt.nz/tools/2018-census-ethnic-group-summaries. 50. Ministry for Pacific Peoples, ‘Annual Report 2018/19’, accessed 14 September 2020, https://www.mpp.govt. nz/assets/Uploads/MPP9879-AR-2019-FINAL-compressed.pdf. 51. Albert L. Refiti, ‘Recontextualising Polynesian Architecture in Aotearoa New Zealand’, in The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture, ed. Elizabeth Grant, Kelly Greenop, Albert L. Refiti and Daniel J. Glenn (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 132. 52. Ministry for Pacific Peoples, ‘Annual Report 2018/19’. 53. Statistics New Zealand, ‘2018 Census Ethnic Group Summaries’. 54. Statistics New Zealand, ‘2018 Census Ethnic Group Summaries’. 55. White Sunday, or Children’s service, is a public holiday celebrated in many Pacific Island nations to celebrate childhood through church programmes and dance performances. 56. Philippa Howden-Chapman, Gina Pene, Julian Crane, Robyn Green, Loi Iupati, Ian Prior and Ioane Teao, ‘Open Houses and Closed Rooms: Tokelau Housing in New Zealand’, Health Education & Behavior 27, no. 3 (2000): 354. 57. Macpherson, ‘A Samoan Solution’, 162. 58. Howden-Chapman, Pene, Crane, Green, Iupati, Prior and Teao, ‘Open Houses’, 355. 59. Henry Coolen, ‘Affordance Based Housing Preferences’, Open House International 40, no. 1 (2015): 74; Gabriel Moser and David Uzzell, ‘Environmental Psychology’, in Handbook of Psychology, ed. Irving B. Weiner (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 419. 60. Statistics New Zealand, ‘New Zealand: An Urban/Rural Profile Update 2016’. 61. Statistics New Zealand, ‘2018 Census Ethnic Group Summaries’. 62. Ministry for Pacific Peoples, ‘Annual Report 2018/19’. 63. Colin Tukuitonga and Sitaleki A. Finau, ‘The Health of Pacific Peoples in New Zealand up to the early 1990’s’, Pacific Health Dialog 4 (1997): 59. 64. Howden-Chapman, Pene, Crane, Green, Iupati, Prior, and Teao, ‘Open houses’, 356. 65. Howden-Chapman, Philippa, Helen Viggers, Ralph Chapman, Kimberley O’Sullivan, Lucy Telfar Barnard and Bob Lloyd, ‘Tackling Cold Housing and Fuel Poverty in New Zealand: A Review of Policies, Research, and Health Impacts’, Energy Policy 49 (2012): 134. 66. Judith A. Voyle and David Simmons, ‘Community Development through Partnership: Promoting Health in an Urban Indigenous Community in New Zealand’, Social Science & Medicine 49, no. 8 (1999): 1035. 67. Macpherson, ‘A Samoan Solution’, 190. 68. Harry Seckel, Hawaiian Residential Architecture (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1954), 9. 69. Macpherson, ‘A Samoan Solution’, 166. 70. Macpherson, ‘A Samoan Solution’, 167–71. 71. Asquith and Vellinga, Vernacular Architecture, 83. 72. Asquith and Vellinga, Vernacular Architecture, 87. 73. Te Matapihi, He Tirohanga Mo Te Iwi Trust, ‘About us’, 27 January 2021, https://www.tematapihi.org.nz/ partnerships. 74. Rau Hoskins, Jenny Lee-Morgan, Wayne Knox, Hurimoana Dennis, Lena Henry, Leisa Nathan, Reuben Smiler and Maia Ratana, Tūranga ki te marae, e tau ana: Reimagining marae-based kāinga in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland: Ngā Wai a te Tūī Press, 2019), 20. 75. Howden-Chapman, Pene, Crane, Green, Iupati, Prior, and Teao, ‘Open Houses’, 357.

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76. James Berghan, David Goodwin, Lyn Carter and Anahera Rawiri, ‘Planning for Community: The Kāinga Tuatahi papakāinga in Central Auckland’, in Kāinga Tahi, Kāinga Rua: Māori Housing Realities and Aspirations, ed. Fiona Cram, Jessica Hutchings and Jo Smith (Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books, 2022), 192–271. 77. Hoskins, Lee-Morgan, Knox, Dennis, Henry, Nathan, Smiler and Ratana, ‘Tūranga ki te marae’, 28; John M. Gray and Jacqueline McIntosh, ‘Voices from Tokelau: Culturally Appropriate, Healthy and Sustainable Extended-family Housing in New Zealand’, Journal of Asia Pacific Studies 2, no. 1 (2011): 81. 78. Geert Hofstede, ‘The Business of International Business Is Culture’, International Business Review 3 (1994): 1145.

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4

Linguistics and architecture, creolistics and history, or, is Norfolk Island architecture (a) creole?



JOSHUA NASH

Norfolk Island, creolistics and creole architecture: An introduction This exploratory chapter posits that studies in creole language linguistics, also called creolistics, may offer a productive tool for understanding changes in the building outcomes of a select example of domestic houses on a South Pacific island. The analysis of these dwellings, built after 1856 by the arrived Pitcairn Islanders on Norfolk Island, an external territory of Australia, is nestled among the author’s long-standing research interests relating architectural concerns with the linguistics, placenaming, and tangible and intangible culture of Norfolk Island. Because the intention of the chapter is to bring architectural history and linguistics closer together theoretically, it is conceded that the empirical architectural analysis could be more developed with a larger sample of houses to develop further and test the presented theory analogizing linguistic creolization with architectural creolization. This is the topic of a separate and more expansive, future research project. The first analysis, labelled ‘Varman’s interpretations’, uses two instances of Norfolk Island architecture defined in 1984 by field archaeologist and former Norfolk Island Museum curator, Robert Varman, namely the ‘Pitcairn Colonial Georgian’ and the ‘Evans’ Style’. These two related yet distinct house types were built from the 1870s onwards primarily by the Pitcairn Islanders. It is the architectural relationship and stylistic evolution from the former to the creation of a latter and new building style which can be attributed largely to a developing Pitcairn Island creole culture on Norfolk Island rather than to Australian and other colonial influences. A second set of domestic architecture, which I call ‘Stacey’s photographs’, further validates this view. I pose the geographical and cultural isolation of the Pitcairners as the principal driver of architectural change in the examples as opposed to other plausible contemporary influences such as the legacy of the British Royal Engineers and their impact on the then developing Australian architectural landscape. These two analyses of architectural record equate empirically built form and memories of faraway Pitcairn Island, a place then distant, to an emerging creolization of architecture and language on Norfolk Island. The entire 190+ population of Pitcairn Island, the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and their Polynesian counterparts, were moved in 1856 to Norfolk Island, some 6,000 kilometres to the west. The Pitcairn Islanders brought with them their language, Pitcairn, a variety which eventually adapted to the changed environmental and social conditions on Norfolk Island and became its own distinct variety, ‘Norfolk’.1 The language has approximately 300 speakers, is an official language of Norfolk Island and is a language of significance to studies of the Pacific, especially English-based contact languages.2 The way of speaking is a combination of several languages – English, Polynesian varieties and St Kitts Creole, a Caribbean contact language.3 For the intention of this chapter I use the label creole as a moniker of

convenience and align it with the general sense of creole in creole architecture and apply it to Norfolk and Norfolk Island creole architecture. Norfolk has received significant attention from language contact scholars both in Australia and internationally and has played a significant role in the theory of modern creolistics.4 The Pitcairn Islanders carried with them their own architectural and building knowledge. As a remote, small island environment, the Norfolk Island architectural situation of the mid-1800s and beyond is an appropriate stage for observing how this previously informal design and building knowledge changed and evolved to create something architecturally new. It is relevant to note that several families migrated back to settle permanently on Pitcairn Island in the 1860s, possibly taking with them building knowledge and architectural language garnered from Norfolk Island. The story of two islands with shared and similar linguistic and cultural, including architectural, histories has been of significant interest to Pacific academic scholarship and popular intrigue for more than a century.

Pidgins, creoles, linguistics and architecture What are pidgins and creoles? A working definition of pidgin languages derived from the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures, a comprehensive, contemporary linguistic study into contact language varieties, is that they are non-native languages arising out of forced interethnic contacts like trade, boarding schools and on plantations where a common language is required.5 They are not the main or default language of any particular ethnic, social or political group. Pidgins have structural norms and must be learned. Pidgins become creoles when they are nativized. Creoles are languages which have evolved in sociohistorical settings of, for example, multilingual interethnic plantation societies and similar socioeconomic situations. These languages are used as native languages as they refer and relate to complex social interactions. Children are often considered the creators of creoles because they stabilize the less stable system of the inherited pidgin language. Creoles, then, are not merely hybrids or derivations of the parent languages; rather, they are entirely new languages which are the result of pidgins being nativized. They have arisen out of creative interpretations in situ where the linguistic needs of a people have commonly become inextricably linked to specific places and behaviours. In the same way that creoles are not simply reinvented pidgins but entirely different languages, it is claimed through the architectural analysis that the new architectural forms developed by the Pitcairn Islanders on Norfolk Island are not simply earlier forms reprised; they are newly developed vernacular forms which have been adapted, accepted and identified with by a group of creole-speaking people into an architectural creole. This is apparent through local autochthony, embedding, aesthetic endeavouring and a striving to make sense of a new environment. The architectural examples exude a feasible correspondence: like spoken languages, architectural styles can exist and change in parallel with the signifying functions they intend to serve. These architectures represent modes of communication that are one of several necessary results which arise out of often forced cultural contact. Here architectural change, where inherited traditions may evolve through processes of architectural creolization, could lead to new, reinterpreted vernacular building forms. I suggest this position because creole architecture as seen through linguistics can possibly give architectural historians and theorists better scope and insight to understand hybridity and vernacular building practices more than other approaches to vernacular building techniques. This is a worthwhile correspondence to analyse, because hitherto creole architectural historiography has been constrained geographically to the United States and the Caribbean. Studies in creole architecture have not employed in their architectural analyses the well-established and above-stated ‘creole as nativized pidgin’ standpoint common in creolistics. Furthermore, previous work in creole architecture has not been carried out by linguists despite linguistics being the most developed area

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of creolization research.6 The theoretical contention, which arises from creolistics, as applied to the Norfolk Island case study goes beyond more pervasive definitions of vernacular building, hybridized architectural form, and creative adaptions in Australia and the Pacific.7 This work builds on other more recent work about cultural change and tradition in the architectures of Oceania and Malaysia.8 There are several possible methodological and theoretical parallels between research in the field of linguistics and historiographical architectural analysis. We can equate language development, for example, the idea that pidgins are evolving vernacular ways of speaking, with the use and reinterpretation of vernacular architectural features. Language change, for example, developing new lexicon in order to make linguistic and cultural sense of novel ecologies, can be extended to architecture by observing how inherited technical expressions like plan, gable and elevation features might be used more colloquially. And linguistic change and expansion in new environments, for example, how pidgins become creoles through the creolization and expansion process with observable change in linguistic levels such as morphology, syntax and semantics, can all be interpreted and extended analogously as a representation and embodiment of architectural change in certain physical and structural facets of domestic building. Adaption to altered environs, the capacity of complex social circumstances to bring about reordering of things, and the function of isolation and abstraction from the original sources of language and architecture are possible drivers of change. The Norfolk Island micro case of architectural creolization scrutinizes several exploratory questions: How useful are investigations into creole architecture for understanding Pacific-external influences, especially those of the Australian mainland, on Pacific architecture? How accidental are the changes observed in Norfolk Island building styles as an Australian-cum-Pacific case study in terms of the cultural contact, which brought about these variations? How useful are technical treatments of linguistic change to understanding architectural change and vice versa? And of theoretical interest to scholars of creole architecture and creolistics: How linguistic is the creole element of creole architecture as illustrated in the Norfolk Island instance of small speaker numbers and small builder numbers? A culmination of these questions leads to a reflection on the higher-order question posed in the subtitle of this chapter: Is Norfolk Island architecture (a) creole? Bracketing the indefinite article illustrates the tension between the use of the word creole as an adjective and its interpretation as a noun in any posing of creole within creole architecture and creolistics.

A brief consideration of creole architecture Research into the creoles spoken by the descendants of formerly enslaved plantation workers largely from Africa in the island Caribbean was first introduced into academic parlance in the late nineteenth century.9 The prospect of hybridity is key to this thinking. Among the gamut of scholarly writings in colonial theory, hybridity and race, Robert Young’s Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race and Stephan Palmié’s article, ‘Creolization and Its Discontents’, go a long way to accounting for and deciphering some of the happenings at play in hybridization of culture(s) and the often denial-driven refusal to accept the processes and results of the explicit or implicit operations of these happenings.10 What has commonly been considered a dissent, a loss of purity and almost as a falling from grace, especially in the linguistic inability of new speakers to master European languages, is the emergence of ‘the creole’: both the person, group and the language speaker. It is necessary to note that while this sense and use of creole are now widespread and useful linguistic constructs and an acknowledgement of an extremely complex process of social and historical events, creolization of cultures and languages was something often denied in the nineteenth century; the mixing of races or the borrowing of vernacular architectural forms or ideas was not welcome in the dawn of the

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age of structuralism. When acknowledged, the processes and results of mixing, hybridity and creolization, which were often associated with infertility and imbecility, were commonly denigrated.11 The situations that generated hybridization, pidginization and often their subsequent creolization processes and creole and hybrid cultures, e.g. architectures and languages, were often biased in terms of power relations and the positioning of authority. Slavery, the accruement of plantation workers and domestic servants, and the overarching hierarchy tipped towards a ‘European-is-wanted, Native-is-unwanted’ typology all warrant an emplacement and spatialization of authority and supremacy. Regarding the politics and hierarchies of difference that often underlie the idea of a creole or creole languages in the nineteenth century, the construction of (a) creole and creole people can in no way be seen as a neutral, apolitical process of contact. Much work into Caribbean creole architecture, its history and subsequent theoretical literature have been summarized by the anthropologist, Jay Edwards, in a series of articles spanning several decades.12 The main conclusion Edwards works toward apropos of creole architecture in the United States and the Caribbean and their existence within larger ‘circumatlantic’ interpretations of the world is that there exist specific historic types and forms of architecture which should be analytically separated from European patterns on the basis of their distinctive creole, mixed or hybrid planning, form and meaning.13 However, this argument for such separation effectively ignores the very context and circumstances that produced the cultural contact in the first place. As a result, I take an opposing perspective to Edwards, which inculcates the varied implications to be drawn from sustained and precise hybridity and blending, which lead to distinct and different outcomes, namely creoles. The Norfolk Island creole architecture example is an exposé of the creation of an entirely new architectural style based in previous inherited and changed forms. This is an equatable process and can be likened to what happens during creole language genesis. This addresses one of the major problems with previous presentations of creole architectural historiography from a linguistic and creolistic position. A working definition of creole architecture based in the Louisiana French creole houses and cottages14 and Jamaican domestic architecture and their offshoots in the French and English Antilles15 focuses on the intermingling of creole and colonial cultures into the built: In reference to vernacular architecture, Creole might refer to any architectural tradition genetically descended from a synthesized tropical colonial form, for example, the maison basse (shotgun house) or the bohio. I use the term in a more specific sense to refer to a historically related family of architectural forms characterized by a distinctive geometric pattern – a European-derived rectangular core that is partially or fully surrounded by peripheral spaces that are always more narrow than the central areas and that includes at least one full-length front gallery or open loggia.16

This definition will be critiqued, refined and advanced throughout this chapter.

A partial architectural history of the arrived-Pitcairn Islanders on Norfolk Island This chapter now turns to how a general consideration from a linguistic perspective of the history and theory of creole architecture applies directly to the Norfolk Island study. Although the architecture of, for example, tropical Queensland and Sydney Georgian domestic housing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries17 could be posed as a creole architecture because these styles involve a hybridization of architectural languages and exist as emplaced European styles within an evolving Australian context, the Norfolk Island architectural example is advantageous. This is because formal and utilitarian change is much

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more overtly linguistic and creole-like, because it was a process of architectural change brought about by a small group of creole people in a confined physical environment during a short time span of adaption and adjustment. Moreover, the arrival of the entire population from Pitcairn Island, the complete society, demonstrates how a new group of people might understand, live in and build on previous architecture and inherited architectural ideas as an entirety and as a single society. This led to a widespread exposure of a succinct, distinct and solitary group of people to architecture they had never previously seen. These adaptions occurred not only in geographical and linguistic isolation, due to the 1700-plus kilometre distance of Norfolk Island from the Australian mainland, but were also found in the overwhelming disconnect with the politics of development and expansion which were taking place contemporaneously in, for example, Sydney and Brisbane.18 At Norfolk Island, the Pitcairn Islanders were practically offered an architecturally anarchic situation of free reign in terms of how they might reinterpret what was a wholly new architecture to them based on what building and architectural know-how they already possessed, the new resources they were availed and the architectural direction in which they wished to travel.19 It is claimed the Pitcairn Islanders were handed down an architectural pidgin, an architectural vernacular which was not native to them. These creole people did take that with which they were entrusted in terms of architectural information and changed it in respect of form – morphology and syntax – and meaning – semantics. The previous pidgin architecture became creole architecture. Linguistics offers several structural opportunities for analysis as regards the possibility that pidgin architectures could become creole architectures. First, that function creates structure as in functional grammar.20 Second, that meaning drives and creates structure, e.g. Lakoff and Johnson’s theory of conceptual metaphor.21 Third, Chomskyan grammar would have us believe meaning interprets structure.22 Fourth, Talmy Givón states that meaning is derived from discourse.23 The position taken here is the first, i.e. that functional objectives, both linguistic and architectural, are the driving forces of change. This differs significantly from Edwards’ largely architecturally and culturally focused definition. The analysed architectures in the remainder of this chapter represent modes of built communication that are at least some of the needed behaviours which have arisen out of displacement and incident cultural contact of the Pitcairners after their arrival on Norfolk Island in 1856. These analyses explore a plausible position: architectural styles like spoken languages can change in parallel with the signifying functions they intend to serve. What is additionally significant is that while the architectural histories of those specializations are comparable to Norfolk Island architecture, for example, at least some aspects of tropical Australian architecture and Sydney’s Georgian architecture are documented to varying degrees,24 there is far less documentation of the formal and substantive nature of Norfolk Island’s architectural history and built styles. In addition to this historical work, the work of Robert Varman in the 1980s brings the empirical documentation of Norfolk Island’s architectural history to a stage upon which several corresponding linguistic and architectural arguments can rest. This evidence consists of a large number of Varman’s archaeological field reports, which include a generous amount of photographs of relevance to architectural historians, and Wesley Stacey’s archive of architectural photographs taken on Norfolk Island between 1968 and 1972.

What the Pitcairn Islanders saw when they arrived Figure  4.1 depicts the state of the domestic and governmental Colonial Georgian architecture in the low-lying areas of Kingston, Norfolk Island where the Pitcairn Islanders arrived in 1856. The establishments on Quality Row, the main thoroughfare in Kingston in the low-lying part of Norfolk Island where the majority of the extant Georgian architecture is situated, were built during the late 1830s and 1840s from limestone

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Fig. 4.1  Colonial Georgian buildings in Kingston, Norfolk Island (image by the author 2007).

quarried from the Kingston area and Nepean Island, a one-kilometre square island 800 metres south of Norfolk Island.25 These buildings are typical and ubiquitous Antipodean Colonial Georgian buildings and were constructed of masonry, with consequently thick walls, and with a standard two- or four-room plan, with a surrounding verandah. Because details of the structural and formal architectural status of these buildings have been previously analysed and published,26 it is only necessary to detail that required for the historical and linguistic argument. An inventory of buildings on Norfolk Island enclosed with correspondence from Sir William Denison, Governor of New South Wales, to Lord John Russell dated 27 October 1855 included an entry for: Officers’ quarters – “12 cottages, 10 of them stone buildings, 1 weather-boarded on stone foundation, 1 weather-boarded, of from 4 to 8 rooms each, with outbuildings of stone, usually 2 rooms with small store-rooms in addition, left with sashes, Venetian shutters, doors, locks, verandah with trellis work and stone flagged, with flights of stone steps in front, and enclosed by walls 9 feet high, all complete.27

As regards how the Pitcairn Islanders felt upon arrival in their new environment and architectural surrounds on Quality Row, Sarah Selwyn describes the allocation of the former officers’ quarters noting: … as yet, however, they hardly look at home in their new abodes, and perhaps, being that they are an out-of-door generation, and not very sensitive about appearances, they never will. The houses

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are detached, – nearly all of stone; the vestibule opens into four dark and nearly empty rooms, whose chief furniture is neat beds cove red with tappa [tapa cloth], and the store of children who sleep in the same.28

Although there is a dearth of documentary evidence to indicate how these buildings were utilized by the Pitcairn Islanders, and while this comprises an entire research project in its own right, documentation such as the narration above suggests a disconnect with their new domestic housing. It is likely that the Pitcairners would not have had adequate lexicon to describe the new-to-them architectural features to which they were now privy. As regards the nature of the form of the Pitcairn Islanders’ inherited Norfolk Island architectural vernacular, a 2002 Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historic Area conservation management plan gives a distinct glimpse of the lay of the land: The officers [sic – no apostrophe] quarters are a series of Colonial Georgian residences, built on a rise above the road to the cemetery, later Quality Row. Each of the residences was set in a walled garden with a front gate and stairs to the stone flagged verandah. Two classes of residence were built, First Class Quarters and the slightly smaller Second Class Quarters. The First Class quarters were distinguished by the 8 columns to the front verandah, the smaller Second Class quarters only having six columns. … The residences were constructed of rubble calcarenite, with massive calcarenite sills and stone flagging to the verandah. The columns to the verandah were originally turned timber. The small pane windows were originally fitted with shutters. Photographic evidence from the late nineteenth century shows that the buildings had a traditional harled finish, a form of rough cast made from the local calcarenite. The sills were picked out in a paler shade.29

Mayhew Folger, captain of the sealing ship, Topaz, who in 1808 landed at Pitcairn Island and discovered the descendants of the Bounty mutineers, had drawn the following illustrations (Figure 4.2) of what anthropologist, Harry Shapiro, who visited Pitcairn Island in 1934, calls a double cottage (the left-hand image is a double house; the right hand image is not)30. In a similar manner to Norfolk Island’s architectural history, documentation of Pitcairn Island’s domestic architecture prior to the departure to Norfolk Island is sparse. The Polynesian woman named ‘Jenny’ by the British, and whose birth name was Teehuteatuaonoa, gives a record that the mutineers initially lived in temporary houses until more permanent structures were completed by around 1819.31 Frederick Beechey, who visited Pitcairn Island on HMS Blossom in 1825, gives a more informative outline of the architectural design of the double cottage: All these cottages are strongly built of wood in an oblong form, and thatched with the leaves of the palmnut tree bent round the stem of the same branch, and laced horizontally to rafters, so placed to give proper pitch to the roof. The greater part [of the houses] have an upper storey, which is appropriated to sleeping, and contains four beds built in the angles of the room, each sufficiently large for three or four persons to lie on. … The floor is elevated above a foot from the ground, and, as well as the sides of the house, is made of stout plank [most likely dunnage]. … The floor is a fixture, but the sideboards are let in the supporters, and can be removed at pleasure, according to the state of the weather, and the whole side may, if required, be laid open. The lower room communicates with the upper by a stout ladder in the centre, and leads up through a trap-door into the bedroom.32

In Pitcairn Island houses, the ‘deck’ was the floor and the ‘galley’ was the kitchen, most likely coming from nautical parlance. A ‘sleeper’ was a floor plank. Unlike the Norfolk Island buildings the Pitcairners inherited, on Pitcairn Island there was no rumpus room, gentlemen’s smoking room, drawing room or officer’s quarters. Kitchens were outside and most of the bathing would have happened in the sea.

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Fig. 4.2  Two houses on Pitcairn Island, Mayhew Folger, 1808; double cottage on left (reproduced in Building Norfolk Island, p. 47).

While an interpretive discussion of the architectural form of Folger’s depiction of the Pitcairn Island house and the transference of architectural lexicon and ideas is warranted, this would require much more space than is available here. To analogize: the architectural thinking the Pitcairners knew on Pitcairn Island and the template of domestic dwelling they brought with them to Norfolk Island, combined with the architecture they inherited on Norfolk Island, would coalesce to become their pidgin variety. This Pitcairn Island architectural template was new in the Norfolk Island landscape. It informed how the Pitcairners would perceive the new buildings they inherited and the styles of which they came to alter. They were eventually ready to creolize their pidgin architectural experience and the pidgin architectural form they inherited once they arrived at their new home island. The Pitcairn Island house is the result of contact involving at least two distinct cultures and architectural styles. First, the thatched roof and open ventilation system (left figure, Figure  4.2) specifically suggests a Polynesian influence and a definite contribution of Pacific vernacular architecture.33 The use of wood, panelling, construction of beds and particularly the structural features are reminiscent of a more European approach to solving the domestic solution of house construction on Pitcairn Island.34 As a result, Folger’s representation is at once an emblematic blend of Polynesian and European architectural forms, an artefact which can be explained as a product of both cultures, as well as being a transformative and forced adaption to provide domestic comforts in a resource-poor environment where creative and productive uses of materials were critical. While the question is valid of whether the (re)interpretations by the arrived Pitcairners based on what they inherited architecturally on Norfolk Island is in some way connected to their architectural or linguistic Anglo-Polynesian background on Pitcairn Island, any architectural change and parallel-cum-concomitant linguistic developments on Norfolk Island have taken place in situ in a new environment. The processes of architectural creolization being argued may have some implicit, tenuous or strong connection to the architectural, cultural and linguistic knowledge-history on Pitcairn Island. The Norfolk Island example seeks to move creole architecture out of the principally nominal realm of Caribbean creole architectural studies to a more linguistically driven outcome. That architectural change carried out by creole people has taken place is enough; the details of whether these Norfolk Island

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interpretations are attributed more to an English prototype or to any Pitcairn Island-Polynesian-inspired blend are less important than the acknowledgement that change and creation and hence architectural creolization in parallel with linguistic creolization have taken place.

Norfolk Island case study 1: Varman’s interpretations The first literature-based case study is a comparative example of how Varman interprets how much architectural change in two specific domestic dwellings has taken place. The images below appear on two pages in a 1984 document on the archaeological significance of Norfolk Island’s several settlement periods. In the section titled ‘Terminology’, Varman writes: Evans’ Style: Basically a gabled roofed structure with an attached kitchen at the back, otherwise similar to Pitcairner Colonial Georgian. Pitcairner Colonial Georgian: The type of house built by the Pitcairn Islanders based on Second Settlement [the convict period – 1825–1855] domestic houses as seen along Quality Row and the Superintendent of Agriculture’s Quarters.35

The two different house styles to which Varman refers are the ‘Pitcairner Colonial Georgian’ and the ‘Evans’ Style’. He uses the latter label because the Evans family, a Pitcairn Islander family, established and advanced the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian across several decades of construction. Sketch elevations for the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian and the Evans’ Style are presented in Figure 4.3a and b, respectively. Note the hipped gable roof in Figure 4.3a, which is raked down to cover verandahs. These roof and verandah forms are examples of architectural change, which necessitated a different style of verandah. It must be emphasized that these physical-morphological architectural changes have parallel semantic changes in not only how these buildings appear in the world, but how they can be interpreted as meaningful parts in the developing individuality and selfhood of this group of builders and language speakers. The actual movement in form and arrangement from Colonial Georgian through the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian and what is claimed became architecturally creolized to the Evans’ Style depicts simultaneously a linguistic filling out by the Pitcairn Islanders who were informed by new cultural and architectural vernaculars as well as a content-driven application of the highlighted principles of creole architecture. Varman describes five built examples of what he terms the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian with its hipped, gable roof where gable ends are truncated off, several with some variations in roof pitch, symmetry or location of the kitchen, what I claim are the morphology and syntax – morphosyntax – of these buildings. These houses were built from 1870 to around the early 1900s. When distinguishing the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian from the Colonial Georgian of Quality Row, Varman lists external treatment of the house, doors, windows, architraving, transom, transom lights, weatherboarding and roof pitch as vital distinguishing features.36 It is posited that the architectural language of the Colonial Georgian, which the Pitcairn Islanders inherited on arrival, inspired the later interpretations of both the Pitcairn Colonial Georgian and what eventually became through more detailed interpretation and architectural creolization the Evans’ Style. Here creolization is taking place in the literal built sense – there are hybridization and interpretation of functions of the buildings and the melding of space, syntax and meaning – and in the reinterpretation and re-creation of architectural features. Varman’s descriptions of how these features are realized are varied: some are ‘pure’ versions of the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian style, ‘with a central doorway with two rooms to either side, one of which was

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(a)

(b)

Fig. 4.3  Fig. 4.3 (a) top – Pitcairner Colonial Georgian, Norfolk Island, sketch elevation; (b) bottom – Evans’ Style, Norfolk Island, sketch elevation. Images from Robert Varman, Survey Study of the First, Second and Third Settlements on Norfolk Island (Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 1984), 7.

divided into two rooms (typical feature of the early Pitcairner homes)’.37 Others are ‘pure’ but with upset symmetry of the apertures, because the kitchen has been incorporated under the main roof.38 The house named ‘Aunty Amy’s’ was built in the Colonial Georgian style as interpreted by the Pitcairn Islanders. In its basic form it resembles the domestic buildings along Quality Row, and even more so the Superintendent of Agriculture’s residence at Longridge [an area just outside of Kingston], which was also constructed of weatherboards. The only real difference would be the steeper pitch of the roof, the placement of the kitchen and perhaps the form of the chimneys.39

What appears in Varman’s examples is that while he explicitly defines the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian as a style which developed outside of Kingston and the Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historic Area with architectural input from the domestic houses on Quality Row from the 1870s onwards, there is a large amount of hybridization of architecture occurring. This blending of prototypical features leads to unclear boundaries in

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how these styles are to be defined intellectually or quintessentially realized architecturally. This position is clearer in the following example: This picturesque house [named “Pa Reuben’” or “Ma Anna’s”] is reputed to be one of the oldest of the Pitcairner houses on the Island. All indications seem to suggest an 1870s date. The house is on a similar plan to all the early Christian houses, (Aunt Amy’s, Allendale, Selwyn Christian’s etc.,) and is similar to Frederick Young’s home. These houses are all built along the lines of the Superintendent of Agriculture’s Quarters, formerly at Longridge. In addition to the east, which seems to blend a little uncomfortably with the Colonial Georgian style of the main part of the house, owes more to the Melanesian Mission picturesque style than any other pre-existing style. (Though the Gothic Picturesque was still very popular in Australia at that time).40

There is an amalgam of several distinct styles: the Colonial Georgian of ‘Aunt Amy’s’,41 that of the more regimented and conservative styles of the Longridge buildings, and the melding of the architectural style of the Melanesian Mission, founded by the Anglican Church in New Zealand and headquartered in the south-western region of Norfolk Island from 1867 to 1920. By the 1920s, some sixty years after arriving from Pitcairn Island, it is clear that the Pitcairners, who could now call themselves Norfolk Islanders, and who largely designed and built their own individual houses and those of family and friends like the Bailey and Taylor families, had absorbed what they had inherited architecturally on Norfolk Island and had changed it through form-based requirement. They needed to build differently using Norfolk Island wood instead of the more expensive and less-available stone. The result was a semantic expansion of what would become for the islanders more appropriate ways of building domestic structures, i.e. dwellings that were more suited to the less-formal, outdoorsy lifestyle the Norfolk Islanders led as compared to the more regimented way of life associated with the Georgian buildings of the 1830s and 1840s depicted in Figure 4.1.

Norfolk Island case study 2: Stacey’s photographs Wesley Stacey is a well-reputed photographer of Australian colonial architecture accredited with more than 3,000 photographs taken in the late 1960s and early 1970s covering vernacular timber constructions, Georgian structures, homestead buildings and historic towns.42 Figure  4.4, taken around 1970, depicts an illustrative example from Stacey’s online corpus of a more modern rendition of the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian. The structure portrays corrugated-iron roofing, dissimilar to the shingled roofing of the original Colonial Georgian, surrounding enclosed verandah, unseen and undocumented on Quality Row, and symmetry observed primarily in the Colonial Georgian and not the Evans’ Style. There are no chimneys, unlike the double-chimneyed dwellings at Kingston, and there is no gap between the abutment of the gabled roof and the verandah roof. This is in contrast to all Colonial Georgian houses, which had a gap between the edge of the gable eaves and the adjoining skillion verandah roof. Here new meaning is being developed out of the new arrangements of architectural features. The hip-roofed cottage is more appropriate climatically than the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian and the Evans’ Style. These houses were also more able to accommodate what had by that time become a lifestyle more suited to the outdoors and agriculture which the Pitcairners had established. The people were more attuned to this lifestyle because it was similar to how they had lived on Pitcairn Island. The architecture of Figure 4.5 depicts an ideal example of how far the design and structural basis of the Colonial Georgian already present to the arrived Pitcairn Islanders in 1856 had literally travelled away from Kingston – Cascade is around 3 kilometres from Kingston – and how the house design travelled away in terms of style into these later and changed architectural products. The architecture of Figure 4.5

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Fig. 4.4  Hip-roofed cottage surrounded with enclosed verandah, Rocky Point, south-western area of Norfolk Island, photo c. 1970 (Wesley Stacey http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj151854038).

Fig. 4.5  View of a Pitcairn Island descendant’s interpretation of a Pitcairn Colonial Georgian residence in the Evans’ Style photographed c. 1970, most likely in the Cascade region of Norfolk Island (photo by Wesley Stacey http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj151852239).

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demonstrates how developed the Pitcairners’ architectural language became stylistically through the many Pitcairn Islander builders, such as those who built this house, and who by this time considered themselves Norfolk Islanders. This house is built in a manner typical of those under the Evans’ Style umbrella. The basic plan of the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian is used, but, although not visible in the photograph, there is a resultant L-shaped asymmetry almost certainly because of an attached kitchen at the back. The unverandahed front window area has a gabled roof, with French doors, which plausibly served as an alternate second entrance and verandahs stretch around on all other sides of the house. The support on the verandah is eclectic, with either single, double or triple wooden columns at corners. There is a departure from the flat-pitched verandah roofs of the Colonial Georgian and the Pitcairn Colonial Georgian to a curved ‘bullnose’ appearance, most likely attributable to the availability of this style of galvanized iron. It is worth presenting Varman’s astute observations of the architectural nature of these two similar yet non-identical building styles: The Pitcairner Colonial Georgian style does not vary considerably from the above illustration [of the Colonial Georgian], except in the placement of the kitchen. During the 1880s french [sic] doors occasionally replaced windows. Sometimes the roof was extended over the side kitchen area, disrupting the symmetry of the apertures. The Evans’ style can vary considerably. In many cases french [sic] doors are substituted for windows. In the majority of cases the kitchen is an attached wing located at the back of the house, resulting in an asymmetrical plan.43

These features impress much more than simply a digression from several of what could have been deemed conservative strictures by the Pitcairn Islanders present in the template of the Colonial Georgian; they manifest adaption, adaptability and a search for more appropriate, easier-to-build, more climate-effective and more cost-smanageable architecture. Still, it was more than that. The Pitcairn Islander-now-becomingNorfolk Islander builders, such as the Bailey and Taylor family who originally worked for and within the Melanesian Mission, built for others as well as building their own homes. Like the architects and builders before the Pitcairners arrived, these builders used foundation material like sandstone quarried from Kingston. Their resultant architecture demonstrated a key sensibility common when describing how creole languages develop and change: they – their structures, their approaches to building, the builders themselves, and the spoken and built language they employed – were creative. This creativity was more than a mere creolization in name, that is, creole people being architecturally inventive. It was a creative inventiveness which went beyond just adaption, adaptability and easier ways to build. A new architectural vernacular, a new creolized blueprint, which took previously (pidginized) pasts and made them more (creolized) real, had been created. The Colonial Georgian’s floor plan, room alignment, nature of the verandah, placement of the kitchen, double chimney and shingled roof have become reinterpreted, re-envisioned and, as has been argued throughout, creolized morphosyntactically and semantically into both the earlier and less stylistically distant Pitcairn Colonial Georgian and the even less strictured Evans’ Style. It is this hybrid architectural language, developed by the Pitcairn Islanders – creole people and creole language speakers – which is claimed is a pertinent exemplar of an Australian creole architecture within a larger Pacific geographical and cultural past. It is posited that architectural creolization was to an extent taking place through the building and living behaviour of the Pitcairner builders’ striving to make sense architecturally of their new natural and inherited

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domestic housing environment. It is feasible to posit that any amount of architectural change in the select examples of Norfolk Island domestic housing could be the result of other influences present in Australia, New South Wales and more specifically in Sydney during the time period being discussed, namely 1870s onwards. It is here the question of whether the changes and adaption which were taking place on Norfolk Island at that time were changes indicative of more general change in architecture elsewhere, primarily Australia, or whether these changes are individual differences taking place intra Norfolk Island on a much smaller scale. While posing the influence of, for example, the architecture of the Royal Engineers on the development of Norfolk Island architecture at this time is tempting,44 it is necessary to take heed of the fact that from the mid-1880s until an increase in the number and speed of ships travelling to the island by around the 1930s, the Pitcairn Islanders on Norfolk Island, after moving away from Kingston in the extreme south of the island, lived in remote locations and were an extremely isolated culture segregated almost entirely from Norfolk Island society at large. A direct result of this isolation is that there was little exchange of ideas, including architectural innovations, and that the Pitcairners were largely a conservative and segregated society. It was during this time that the largest number of monolingual Norfolk speakers existed in Norfolk Island’s history,45 a firm indicator that there was little interaction between Pitcairners and English speakers. Linguistic isolation and architectural isolation are analogized. Isolation can breed internal (cultural) change. It is these self-directed change processes of creolization, it is argued, which provide and are the basis of architectural change. There are small yet obvious changes in the architectural production from the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian to the Evans’ Style, which can possibly be likened to a process of creolization: there is a difference in the possible pitch of a roof – the Evans’ Style gabled roof can be much steeper (Figure 4.2) than the shallower sloped Pitcairn Colonial Georgian (Figure 4.1); Evans’ Style verandahs are wider and often travel around the whole house; few Evans’ Style houses were built entirely with stone, because quarrying stone was uneconomical after the convict labour used to build the Pitcairn Colonial Georgian houses on, for example, Quality Row was no longer available; and the arrived Pitcairner families, who were to be resident on Norfolk Island indefinitely, tended to have larger families, often with up to ten children, than many of the convict-period Quality Row residents. The larger family sizes and their greater reliance on agriculture meant that residents were better suited to the larger Evans’ Style dwellings. The thesis being proposed supposes that the changes in the built structures, which are revealed in Figures  4.1 and 4.2, may have parallel linguistic changes, because of the nature of the evolving familial structures and language change. Put succinctly: linguistic creolization – morphosyntactic and semantic change and expansions – appears either to have begotten or have occurred at a similar time as architectural creolization. And architectural creolization appears either to have effected or have occurred at a similar time as linguistic creolization.

Linguistics, architecture and Norfolk Island: A summation A consideration of the architectural documentation of the chosen domestic quarters represents a method of connecting built form to a present in terms of a past: memories of Pitcairn Island, places now distant, an emerging creolization of architecture and language seen through local linking, embedding and aesthetic endeavouring. The architectural examples interconnected several elements in an exploratory manner drawn from linguistic analysis, e.g. interpretations of morphology, syntax and semantics, and demonstrated that developing architectural styles can exist and change in parallel with the signifying functions they intend to serve. These architectures depict modes of communication and representation that are one of several

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necessary results which arise out of often forced cultural contact. Simultaneously, the architectural change in terms of an inherited form becoming what has been claimed is a process of architectural creolization leads to the genesis of a new and native form of architecture. The Pitcairners were forced into a new environment on Norfolk Island in which they could either adapt and thrive or not. This adaption could have taken place on many levels, with the position taken herein being one of linguistic and architectural adjustments. What this chapter has shown is that these creole-speaking people did eventually adapt, accept, value and even identify with this novel and developed architectural vernacular into and as an architectural creole. They have adapted, accepted and identified with this architecture in their own specific, distinct and even idiosyncratic way. The architectural language, and its development in parallel with the changing spoken vernacular of the Norfolk Island language, is not the old language but has gradually evolved and become synthesized as their own built forms were used on their own terms. These architectural forms and building behaviours have been repeated and passed down through generations. Because the major focus of this work was theoretical with a concomitant small empirical sample, there is necessarily an ongoing task to return to Norfolk Island to compile a larger sample of houses to further develop and test the postulated theories. One of the tasks would be to turn the analogizing of linguistic levels like morphology, syntax and semantics into empirical architectural documentation in the Norfolk Islanders’ early extant architecture. This could further strengthen the creole architecture and architectural creolization argument from a linguistic standpoint. The argument advanced is that the weakness of the Caribbean creole architecture literature is that it does not present a distinct linguistic take on the architectural change processes. While there is a degree of sophisticated social cultural change presented in such work, this chapter encourages architectural historians to employ linguistic theories to understand cultural change processes more readily. There are several benefits of applying theories of creole linguistics to creole architecture. These potentially offer architectural historians different ways of thinking about cultural change in architectural vernaculars across generations so that linguists, cultural anthropologists and architectural historians might be able to work together more effectively in future. Returning to the questions posed at the outset, Norfolk Island provides an entrance point into the possibility of creole architecture more generally and creole architecture in the Pacific more specifically. The changes, which appear in the Norfolk Island architectural examples, do not appear to be accidental; they exist as contemporaneous transactional processes and mediations in architectural interpretation based not only in improved possibilities and means of production, but also in a striving for more detailed adaption to what was a quickly changing and socially restructured natural, architectural and linguistic environment. Because of this explicit linguistic element in the representation of the architecture and its builders, a more cogent argument has been offered regarding a more definite linguistic interpretation and example of (Pacific) creole architecture in contrast to the hitherto overly Caribbean-centric approach. It is here that work-in-progress answers to the higher-order question that have been put forward as regards the analysed examples: Norfolk Island architecture is creole – it is creole-like; Norfolk Island architecture is a creole – it is a creole architectural language. While there is a latent incongruity between an adjectival sensitivity and a nominal recognition of ‘creole’ as present in ‘creole architecture’, the Norfolk Island architecture and the Norfolk language example does quieten some of this potential dissonance. The established term ‘Colonial Georgian’ and Varman’s more recent exegetical rendition of ‘Pitcairner Colonial Georgian’ and ‘Evans’ Style’ not only have altered in some way the architectural lexicon of Norfolk Island and hence Australia, but have also accentuated the effect these monikers-as-styles have had on Norfolk Island’s physical architectural landscape. More than a mere change in label or designation, the actual movement in form and arrangement from Colonial Georgian through the Pitcairner Colonial Georgian

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and architecturally creolized to the Evans’ Style depicts simultaneously a linguistic filling out by the Pitcairn Islanders who were informed by new cultural and architectural vernaculars as well as a content-driven application of the highlighted principles of creole architecture. It is now worth reconsidering the usefulness and limitation of Edwards’ definition of creole architecture which was presented initially. Edwards claims that creole architecture in the United States and the Caribbean and their broader interpretations elicit specific historic types and forms of architecture which should be analytically separated from European patterns on the basis of their distinctive creole, mixed or hybrid planning, form and meaning.46 Based in the history of creolization research and work into creole architecture, particularly in light of the fact that some of the most comprehensive and convincing research into creolization has taken place within creolistics, taking a more definite and exact linguistic position has proven beneficial. Regarding the question ‘how linguistic is the “creole” element of creole architecture?’, it is suggested that research so far has not been overly linguistic at all. This survey advocates that future work in creole architecture should be more aware of the advancements and insights contact language linguistics and creolistics have made to the field of creolization, and hopefully vice versa, in Australia, the Pacific and in the Caribbean. In light of this chapter’s findings and building on and scrutinizing Edwards’ definition of creole architecture previously presented, I put forward a more linguistically focused characterization: Creole architecture and the process of architectural creolisation is what takes place when a group of people, especially those who themselves are culturally mixed, inherit often due to relocation, a pre-determined and already-built building style as an architectural pidgin. When this pidgin architecture becomes vernacularised through necessary building and cultural adaption and expanded in terms of its meaning (semantics) and size and ordering (syntax), it becomes creole architecture. Further, in locations where there is parallel language development taking place in the architecture makers’ society, it is proposed that the changes in built environment may have parallel linguistic changes, because of the nature of the evolving familial structures and language change. That is, linguistic creolisation appears either to have begotten or have occurred at a similar time as architectural creolisation and vice versa.

As regards the Pacific setting of Norfolk Island and its connection to Pitcairn Island and Polynesia, expanses of time-space, memory and ocean can become transplanted through the vectors of architecture and language. The Pitcairn Colonial Georgian and the Evans’ Style dwellings are fundamental exemplars of Pacific migration-made-real in a changing architectural vocabulary. While psychological distance from Pitcairn Island to Norfolk Island may appear small for both islands’ populations, the vastness of tracts of the South Pacific Ocean is not; the negotiations and reconciliations required for a new population to inhabit a fresh-for-them though already touched, named and languaged environment and to learn to adapt through whatever means is ladened with prospect and hope. Such ambition and the intellectual and physical mobility which have often driven such journeying in the Pacific has helped us arrive at and inspect what an amalgam of architecture and linguistics may deliver. The research project on which this chapter is based set out to argue that studies in creole language linguistics, also called creolistics, may offer architectural historians different ways of thinking about cultural change in architectural vernaculars across generations so that linguists and architectural historians might be able to work together more effectively in future. This correspondence should be productive in both directions; creole architecture reasoning could offer much to creolists and linguists working in comparable language-based environments. These exploratory and hypothetical frameworks need to be further tested from the standpoint of both architectural history and linguistics. Such studies would ideally be comparative studies involving larger samples through across time of both architectural and linguistic documentation to ascertain drivers of creolization and change. Extra-Caribbean and extra-Pacific work would be welcome and likely illustrative.

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Acknowledgement The author expresses his gratitude for the generous financial assistance given as the recipient of the 2017 David Saunders Founder’s Grant for the project, ‘Connecting Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island through Architecture: Islands, architecture, and language’. He acknowledges the help of Peter Mühlhäusler regarding some of the architectural lexicon in the languages of Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island. Katie Barclay read an earlier version of this chapter at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Aarhus, Denmark, in 2018.

Notes 1. There is a distinction between the Pitcairn Island language, ‘Pitcairn’, and the place of ‘Pitcairn Island’, just as there is a distinction between the Norfolk Island language, ‘Norfolk’, and the place of ‘Norfolk Island’. The Pitcairn and Norfolk languages have had many glossonyms (language names), some endonymic (names given by insiders) and others exonymic (names given by outsiders). The glossonyms used here are the least controversial and most appropriate. Regarding introductory general surveys on pidgins, creoles and other contact language with a Pacific leaning, see Darrell Tryon and Jean-Michel Charpentier, Pacific Pidgins and Creoles: Origins, Growth and Development (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), and the substantial Stephen Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler and Darrell T. Tryon (eds.), Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996). 2. For further details on Norfolk and its linguistic and cultural role in Norfolk Island society, see Donald C. Laycock, ‘The Status of Pitcairn-Norfolk: Creole, Dialect, or Cant?’ in Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties, ed. Ulrich Ammon (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 608–29. See also Shirley Harrison, ‘The Social Setting of Norfolk Speech’, English World-Wide 6, no. 1 (1985): 131–53. Peter Mühlhäusler gives a concise sociohistorical overview of the languages of Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island in Pitkern-Norf’k (Boston/ Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020). 3. Philip Baker and Peter Mühlhäusler, ‘The Creole Legacy of a Bounteous Mutineer: Edward Young’s Caribbean Contribution to the Language of Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands’, Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 45, no. 2 (2013): 170–86. 4. See Peter Mühlhäusler, ‘Some Notes on the Ontology of Norf’k’, Language Sciences 33, no. 4 (2011): 673–79, for a summary of the emplacement of Norfolk within modern linguistic theory. For a historical account of research into Norfolk and its relevance to creolistics, see Adrian Young, ‘Mutiny’s Bounty: Pitcairn Islanders and the Making of a Natural Laboratory on the Edge of Britain’s Pacific Empire’, PhD thesis, Department of History, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, 2016. 5. See, for example, ‘Introduction’ to Susanne Michaelis, Philippe Maurier, Martin Haspelmath and Magnus Huber, Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), xxxi–xlviii, for more precise definitions about creoles and the history of other contact languages. 6. Charles Stewart’s Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007) presents twelve impressive approaches detailing the history of creole and creolization and how the semantics and realities of these concepts differ from other related definitions like syncretism and hybridity. Significant to the present study of Pacific linguistic and architectural creolization is Stewart’s and the individual chapter authors’ querying of whether the Caribbean should, in 2007, continue to hold the ‘copyright’ over the meaning and interpretation of these terms (p. 5). In their chapter in Stewart’s volume, ‘Creole linguistics from its beginnings, through Schuchardt, to the present day’ (pp. 84–107), world renowned creolists, Philip Baker and Peter

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Mühlhäusler, launch a strong argument for the placement of creole language linguistics – creolistics – at the centre of theory in creolization theory not only in the Caribbean but around the world. 7. In ‘“Architecture”: Exploring the Treatise’, Architectural Theory Review 12, no. 1 (2007): 78–96, and ‘Exploring a Cross-cultural Theory of Architecture’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 19, no. 2 (2008): 51–68, and using Indigenous Australian Aoriginal and Pacific examples and traditions, Paul Memmott and James Davidson provide a strong theoretical standpoint on what may constitute the nature of designed, arranged and constructed environments. 8. Paul Memmott, ‘Cultural Change and Tradition in the Indigenous Architecture of Oceania’, Architectural Theory Review 16, no. 1: 38–54; John H. S. Ting, The History of Architecture in Sarawak Before Malaysia (Sarawak: Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia, 2018). 9. Among the many and varied studies into the history of creolization in the Caribbean, see, for example, Jay Edwards, ‘Unheralded Contributions across the Atlantic World’, Atlantic Studies 5, no. 2 (2008): 165; see also many sections of Richard Price, ‘“Some Anthropological Musings on Creolization”’, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 22, no. 1 (2007): 16–36. 10. Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995); Stephan Palmié, ‘Creolization and Its Discontents’, Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 433–56. 11. For a treatise on the role of hybridity and its political manifestations in a pre- and postcolonial world, see Anjali Prabhu, Hybridity: Limits, Transformations, Prospects (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012). 12. Jay Edwards, ‘The Origins of Creole Architecture’, Winterthur Portfolio 29, no. 2/3 (Summer–Autumn, 1994): 155–89. 13. Jay Edwards, ‘Unheralded Contributions across the Atlantic World’, Atlantic Studies 5, no. 2 (2008): 161–2. 14. Edwards, ‘The Origins of Creole Architecture’, 155. 15. James Robertson, ‘Jamaican Architectures before Georgian’, Winterthur Portfolio 36, no. 2/3 (Summer–Autumn, 2001): 73–95. 16. Edwards, ‘The Origins of Creole Architecture’, 155. 17. For details of the history of the tropical Queensland house, see, for example, Balwant Saini, The Australian House: Homes of the Tropical North (Sydney: New Holland Books, 2002). 18. For a comprehensive summary of the politics of architecture and colonial expansion in Sydney, see Michael Rosenthal, ‘London versus Sydney, 1815–1823: The Politics of Colonial Architecture’, Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 2 (2008): 191–219. 19. Historian, Babette Smith, gives an excellent account of the ‘changing of the guard’ and the handing over of the reigns of Norfolk Island to the Pitcairn Islanders in her chapter ‘The Handover: A Glimpse of Men and Management in the Penal Colonies’, in Islands of History: Proceedings of the 25th Anniversary Conference, Norfolk Island, 2010 by the Professional Historians Association (NSW) (Sydney: Anchor Books, 2011), 245–60. Smith details questions relating to how the Pitcairners were received when they first arrived on Norfolk Island and whether the arrivals were encouraged to live autonomous, separate lives or to become integrated with the broader Norfolk Island society after the penal colony was disbanded in 1855. Some families became more integrated than others. The interested reader is referred to this source for more precise description. 20. See, for example, Johanna Nichols, ‘Functional Theories of Grammar’, Annual Review of Anthropology 13 (1984): 97–117. 21. See, for example, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, ‘Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language’, The Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 8 (1980): 453–86. 22. See, for example, Noam Chomsky, ‘Conditions on Rules of Grammar’, Linguistic Analysis 2 (1976): 303–51. 23. See, for example, Talmy Givón, Functionalism and Grammar (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995).

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24. Graham Wilson and Martin Davies, Norfolk Island: The Archaeological Survey of Kingston and Arthur’s Vale (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1983). 25. Philip Cox and Wesley Stacey, Building Norfolk Island (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1971), 28. 26. M. Herriott, P. Rodis, K. Walters and Australia. Department of Home Affairs and Environment, Norfolk Island: The Architectural Historical Record of Kingston and Arthur’s Vale (Canberra: Department of Housing and Construction, 1981); Cox and Stacey, Building Norfolk Island, 33–5. 27. Sir W. Denison to Lord John Russell, 27 October 1855 in ‘Correspondence on the Subject of Removal of Inhabitants of Pitcairn’s Island to Norfolk Island’, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1857). 28. Sarah Selwyn, ‘The Pitcairners in Norfolk Island: Manuscript Journal of a Visit to Norfolk Island in the Winter (June/August) of 1856’, New Zealand Quarterly Review and Magazine of General and Local Literature 1, no. 3 (1857): 149–69. 29. Otto Cserhalmi and Partners, Draft Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area Conservation Management Plan (Sydney: Otto Cserhalmi & Partners, 2002), no pagination (p. 367 in digital document). 30. Harry L. Shapiro, The Heritage of the Bounty: The Story of Pitcairn Through Six Generations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), 15. 31. Account by ‘Jenny – her narrative’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 17 July 1819, 817. 32. Frederick Beechey, Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and Berring’s Strait, to Cooperate with the Polar Expeditions: Performed in His Majesty’s Ship Blossom, under the Command of Captain F.W. Beechey (Amsterdam: Da Capo Press, 1968), 107. 33. Paul Memmott and James Davidson, ‘Indigenous Culture and Architecture in the South Pacific Region: 25 Years of SAHANZ Research’, Fabrications 18, no. 1 (2008): 74, 85, 87, put forward several quintessential features of Pacific and Polynesian architecture including thatching. 34. For a discussion of the use of wood in houses in Oceania see, for example, Margaret Rodman, Houses far from Home: British Colonial Space in the New Hebrides (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001); for a description of crossovers between domestic architecture, historical archaeology, contact and colonialism in Oceania and its effect on a European vernacularization of architecture in the Pacific, see James L. Flexner, ‘Historical Archaeology, Contact, and Colonialism in Oceania’, Journal of Archaeological Research 22, no. 1 (2014): 43–87. 35. Robert Varman, Survey Study of the First, Second and Third Settlements on Norfolk Island (Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission), 6. 36. Ibid., 151. 37. Ibid., 243. 38. Ibid., 125. 39. Ibid., 142. 40. Ibid., 74. 41. Ibid., 142. 42. A summary of this larger corpus is published in Philip Cox and Clive Lucas, Australian Colonial Architecture; Selected Photographs by Wesley Stacey (Melbourne: Lansdowne Editions, 1978). 43. Varman, op cit., 7. 44. John Weiler, ‘Colonial Connections: Royal Engineers and Building Technology Transfer in the Nineteenth Century’, Construction History 12 (1996): 3–18, details how knowledge and technologies were transferred throughout British colonies after Royal Engineers were sent, for example, to Australia in 1835. 45. Peter Mühlhäusler, ‘The Pitkern-Norf’k Language and Education’, English World-Wide 28, no. 3 (2007): 215–47, gives precise details about the nature and number of Norfolk language speakers on Norfolk Island around this time. 46. Edwards, ‘Unheralded Contributions across the Atlantic World’, 161–2.

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84

Part 2  Bridging between local cultures and influences of modernity

5

Is vernacular the new modern? Reflections on movements, changes and preservation in Indonesia



GABRIELE WEICHART

The notion of vernacular culture has become commonly, but not exclusively, used as a synonym for traditional, customary and local forms of tangible cultural expression – the opposite of the modern and global. Often implicit in the idea of vernacular cultural production is the creation of non-standardized, ‘native’ things which are produced by ‘common’ people instead of professionals. As a broad, encompassing and mutable concept, the vernacular fully belongs neither to the past nor to the present or future; it does not always correspond with localized cultural traditions, while never subsumed within global modernity. Contemporary Indonesia is a country where we can witness the vernacular and its dynamics in various fields, like architecture, craft, food and dress. The focus of this chapter is on vernacular ‘movements’ in western Indonesia and particularly in Java, a region with long traditions of cultural production in arts and crafts, music and dance and, of particular interest here, architecture and housing. Despite a strong emphasis on development and modernization in political and social programmes throughout the twentieth century in Indonesia, these cultural traditions have been preserved and practised, although frequently in modern variations and with adaptations to changing socio-economic and political environments. In focusing on the meanings of vernacular culture, especially as they find expression in architecture in contemporary Javanese society, this chapter examines how individuals and groups with different political, religious or ideological orientations, as well as different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, have used, and sometimes instrumentalized, local cultural traditions to achieve various goals within modernday Indonesia. My concern in what follows is to elucidate by examples how Javanese traditional culture continues to play meaningful roles in regional and national politics, in tourism and local heritage-making, and significantly, in people’s everyday lives. Javanese ‘high’ culture continues to have an ‘aura’ of social distinction, but vernacularization has made it widely accessible and seen its relatively seamless integration within modern middle-class consumer culture.

Vernacularity as tradition For a long time, (Western) anthropologists were mainly interested in traditional cultures in far away, exotic countries. These cultures were imagined as remote in space and time. For many decades this has no longer been so. However, while anthropologists have turned to ‘modern’ topics where the foci of study are their own or neighbouring societies, non-academic organizations and the general public continue to think about and talk vaguely of traditions and traditional particularities. Traditions are as spoken of as encompassing a past of thousands of years or with origins only a few decades ago. Consequently, the term ‘tradition(al)’ has increasingly become unpopular among Western scholars1 – although given its common usage in popular discourse, it will be used in this chapter when it seems helpful to do so when discussing certain architectural or other cultural phenomena.

In the anthropology of architecture, a sub-field of anthropology, the term ‘traditional’ has largely been replaced the term ‘vernacular’. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, ‘vernacular’ in relation to architecture refers to ‘a local style in which ordinary houses are built’.2 Architects and anthropologists in this field rarely disagree with this short definition or with that by Paul Oliver, which embraces ‘all the types of building made by people in tribal, folk, peasant and popular societies where an architect, or specialist designer, is not employed’.3 Clare Nash similarly emphasizes that ‘vernacular architecture is simple architecture: usually dwellings that respond to climate and culture and are sustainable “by accident”’.4 Working with these three definitions, we can usefully say that vernacular architecture consists of ordinary but sustainable houses built in local style, and in correspondence with the local climate and culture. They are also built by local people who are not professional architects or designers. Contrary to the notion of traditional architecture, which – by being in opposition to ‘modern’ – implicitly refers to an earlier time or age, vernacular architecture has vaguer connections with the past. Vernacular architecture can be found at all times and in all countries or places, but like ‘traditional’, the term ‘vernacular’ more often refers to architecture in rural than in urban areas, which has its roots in the past, and is found more in societies of the Global South than those of the North. Indonesia is one such example. Architects and anthropologists have extensively studied local architectures throughout the archipelago. These architectures have either been classified as traditional or vernacular architectures, or as both, depending not only on the objects themselves but also on the time of research and the researcher’s background and preference. Although architecture is one of the main fields where the term ‘vernacular’ is frequently used, it has also been applied to other cultural activities. In Indonesia, these include arts and crafts like various types of textile production, carving, sculpture and leather work, as well as music, dance and theatre. In most cases, there are implicit references to the past. The focus of this chapter is on architecture in central Java, but some attention is given to these forms of vernacular culture when it serves to highlight aspects of architectural change or continuity in the region. The most prestigious and best-known examples of Javanese vernacular architecture are the joglo and limasan wooden houses. The terms strictly refer to the complex roof types which once upon a time were characteristic for houses owned and inhabited by upper class and noble families. Joglo and limasan constructions were commonly parts of a compound that consisted of various interconnected buildings which were used for different purposes and therefore had different social uses and cultural values. This was reflected in the roof types chosen. The joglo roof, followed by limasan, was reserved for the most prestigious buildings, like the pendapa in the public area of the compound which was used to receive guests and for (semi-)public events.5 Compounds were built for larger, extended families and also required large properties of land. Both characteristics no longer correspond with today’s living realities. Families and households have become smaller, and land has become scarce and expensive on the densely populated island of Java. As many people can afford only small areas of land and houses, there is a tendency to build or expand vertically rather than horizontally. The effect is that house owners build a second floor on top of the original house when they need more space, especially in the crowded areas in or near cities. Joglo and limasan qualify to be called traditional building styles because the knowledge of building has been handed down over many generations and the basic constructions often still greatly resemble buildings constructed a hundred years ago or even earlier.6 These building styles are now referred to as ‘vernacular’ rather than ‘traditional’ in many contexts, but how accurate is it to describe these building styles as ‘vernacular architecture’? Let’s have another look at the definitions of vernacular architecture given above. The Javanese houses represent a typical local building style and correspond to the local climate and culture.

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However, it is questionable how sustainable the houses now are because expensive and rare hardwood can no longer be used for the main pillars and other construction elements of the joglo and limasan. Thirdly, joglo and limasan are complicated constructions and the builders have to have specialized knowledge, although they were not professional designers or architects in a modern sense. A final argument against describing these houses as ‘vernacular’ is that they were not owned by ‘ordinary’ people, certainly not the joglo. Despite its ambiguity, the term ‘vernacular’ is commonly used in research and publications about these architectural forms. In fact, there is a fine line between the vernacular and professional or ‘high’ culture. They often overlap and cannot always be distinguished or separated. This is the case not only with architecture but also with other forms of tangible and intangible culture. We may take batik, gamelan music and Javanese dance as examples. They all have their roots in old, pre-colonial cultural practices and therefore fit into the category of ‘traditional culture’. As it is the case with all traditions, changes and transformations certainly have occurred over time. New melodies, dance movements and batik patterns have been invented; new materials have been used; performances and motifs have adopted new meanings; and people of different social backgrounds have become artists, audiences and owners of the textiles, music instruments and dance costumes. Nonetheless, the reference to the past is still a strong component. In 2009, for example, Indonesian batik was designated ‘Intangible Heritage’ by UNESCO. What these three cultural phenomena further have in common is that, in past centuries, they were practised and developed into refined forms of art within the environment of royal courts and among the aristocracy. This history has not been forgotten. Indeed, Javanese society is still hierarchically structured based on a class system. Cities and towns where kings and princes once resided, and some of them still do, have continued to function as centres of ‘high’ or classical culture with an agglomeration of refined arts and crafts. However, these cultural phenomena are no longer restricted to the highest social ranks. ‘Ordinary’ people can also learn and practise these art forms in their villages or city districts. Within a family, the father may play in the local gamelan orchestra, the mother may contribute to the family income by doing batik and selling it to the nearby craft cooperative, and the daughter may learn classical dance in a neighbourhood school. The reference to ‘tradition’ in architecture, arts and crafts therefore not only qualifies the objects and practices as old and authentic, but also as representatives of a sophisticated culture and glorious past. However, not all Javanese architecture, music, dance and textiles have their origins in the court environments. Folk cultures and ordinary buildings existed in the past and have continued to do so until today.

Vernacular architecture in transition The example of Javanese architecture and art shows us that in defining the vernacular, especially in distinguishing the traditional from the professional, is not always easy and straightforward. What has made it even more difficult in recent times is that old social and cultural categories which strongly defined not only people’s status but also their behaviour, preferences and cultural knowledge and practices have become less strict and increasingly blurred. Culture is in flux, not only horizontally from one part of the country or of the world to another, but also vertically. This means that social strata have become more permeable, with knowledge, ideas and values, objects, practices and traditions being exchanged and moving between social groups, categories and classes that once upon a time were considered fixed and immutable. Javanese vernacular architecture is an appropriate example of changes and exchanges, stability and movements. Cahyono, Farkhan and Nugroho studied the transformation of Javanese houses in Surakarta and demonstrated their temporary nature and, at the same time, their continuity as meaningful objects and spaces.7 Javanese traditional houses are based on the principle of a shelter with a knockdown wooden

Is Indonesian Vernacular the New Modern? 89

frame system which enables them to be moved from one place to another. The physical manifestations of traditional Javanese houses are specific spatial patterns, the shapes of the buildings, the use of building materials and the design of ornaments. The authors argue that even modern vernacular houses adhere to the traditions because the ‘spirit of Java’ is captured in the buildings and provides a continuity of the ‘noble traditional architectural values’.8 Although Cahyono Farkhan and Nugroho do not see the physical form as most important for the identity of a house and its belonging to Javanese tradition, the material parts are not irrelevant. The individual elements of houses are important storage places for ancestral heritage and represent socio-cultural values. This may be one explanation why after the demolition of a traditional wooden house, many such elements, like wooden panels, doors and beams, are sold to private people or workshops where they are reused in other, often new buildings. The houses, for which the old elements are used, vary. If they are of the same or a similar traditional style as the spare elements, the latter integrate inconspicuously. In modern houses, the old spare parts are usually positioned in such a way that they attract attention by giving the house a ‘special touch’. Mixed-type or ‘semi-vernacular’ houses in terms of materials, building styles and/or spatial arrangements have become increasingly common in the past few decades.9 They may, for instance, be brick or concrete houses with a joglo or limasan roof. Alternatively, the front part of the house or building complex resembles a traditional house and the back area is a modern construction. There seem to be infinite possibilities of variation as everybody can, at least theoretically, build whatever he/she likes. Building regulations in Indonesia are neither very tight and nor strictly controlled.10 The trade with wooden spare parts as well as with whole houses has become a flourishing business in Java and beyond. A growing number of antiquity shops, construction workshops and online businesses have specialized in the purchase and sale of Javanese traditional architecture. The dismantled buildings and single wooden elements are collected in rural central and eastern Java. Depending on the demand and the company’s image and capacities, the materials are either repaired or refurbished first or sold straight-away to their domestic or international customers. Most objects remain in Java, but there is also considerable

Fig. 5.1  A Javanese joglo in the front and a modern house in the background. Special Region of Yogyakarta, 2019. G. Weichart.

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demand for Javanese architecture and artefacts on other islands, especially in Bali and there mainly in the tourism and gastronomy sectors. Some joglo and limasan are even exported to other Asian countries, Australia, Europe and the Americas. In recent years, the market for vernacular architecture and wooden furniture has expanded. Social media, like Facebook and Instagram, play a crucial role in the advertisement and sales activities. There, not only professional traders but also many private individuals can easily offer their old houses and other objects for sale. The qualities of houses and house elements offered online and in the shops range from very simple, half demolished, half broken or rotten pieces to very artistic, well preserved and polished objects. The prices vary not only in accordance with the type, size, quality and rarity of a certain object, but also depending on the type of outlet and marketing skills of the salespeople. While stylish enterprises cater for the prosperous and international clientele, the less affluent can get better bargains via the social media or even buy the objects straight from the original owners. Those who live in the region themselves have the advantage of direct access to the local market. Others may have to rely on intermediate persons or professional traders who organize the transport and then reassemble whole houses or offer individual house elements for sale in their workshops or online. Once upon a time, joglo and limasan houses were the most characteristic building types of Javanese vernacular architecture, and as such they were signs of social status of their Javanese owners who belonged to the local elite. With demographic and socio-economic changes, and heavy damages by an earthquake in 2006, many people who inherited such houses, even in rural areas, no longer have any use for them and are more than happy to sell them to a ‘generous’ bidder. By no longer being traditional signifiers of status and locality on the one hand, and being turned into objects of desire for an at least moderately wealthy group of customers on the other, these houses have become commodities, the value of which is largely defined by their materials, craftsmanship and technical as well as aesthetic qualities.11 These days anyone who can afford them can purchase houses or house elements which, until a few generations ago, were reserved for the Javanese noble class. It is mainly the urbanized, well-educated middle class that is interested in traditional architecture and other antiquities. Like in other parts of the world, the term ‘middle-class’ in the Indonesian context has been used in a rather general and unspecific way. Whether household economies, consumption patterns, professions or levels of education have been the main criteria for determining social classes, a large and heterogeneous group of people may be included. Following van Klinken, I therefore use the plural term ‘middle classes’ at some occasions.12 For a long time, anthropologists did not show great interest in the Indonesian middle classes. This was not only because of their relatively small numbers compared to lower social classes. A more compelling reason was the anthropologists’ search for ‘traditionality’ and ‘cultural authenticity’ which supposedly characterized more the rural than the urban populations and perhaps least a middle class which oriented themselves towards Western societies. Economic growth, technological development and education, which were especially promoted by the Indonesian government under President Suharto (1967–98), were key factors for the rise of the middle classes. However, already during Dutch colonialism, Western-style education and jobs in the administration were available to small groups of the local populations by the later nineteenth century.13 This new non-aristocratic ‘bourgeoisie’ adopted European modernist values, intellectualism and lifestyle, as the power and influence of the aristocracy began to wane.14 In recent decades, lifestyle and consumption have increasingly become criteria of distinction, especially for the middle classes. Much has been said and written about Indonesian middle-class preferences for Western goods, tastes and lifestyles, about their positive attitudes towards globalization and their affinities for modernization.15 And indeed, much of it can be witnessed, especially in the big metropoles where shopping malls range among the most popular places to spend time, sometimes hours, with family and friends. Not only the shops but

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Fig. 5.2  Recycled wooden poles and antiquities in a new private house in the city of Yogyakarta, 2022. G. Weichart.

also many of the restaurants, local food stalls, international fast-food outlets and trendy cafes in these shopping centres are more expensive than comparable places outside. Shopping centres nonetheless attract large numbers of customers, especially among the financially better-off middle classes for whom the malls have become places of regular encounter and consumption and, hence, important parts of their everyday lives. Gerke observed that, during the 1990s, the last decade of the ‘Orde Baru’ or ‘New Order’ of the Suharto government, not only education, but also consumption and a modern lifestyle were the main parameters of class distinction, especially between the middle and lower classes. Through such a form of ‘lifestylization’, social distinctions were culturalized so that group identity and spirit became strengthened.16 While in the 1980s and ’90s, modern middle-class people’s consumption was mainly oriented towards imported and Western-style goods, changes could be noticed in the 2000s and thereafter. The end of Suharto’s more than thirty years of leadership and the beginning of the ‘reformasi’ era brought big changes in Indonesian politics and society. The politics of ‘otonomisasi’ meant greater regional autonomy and decentralization which gave the provincial and regional governments more power and strengthened their self-confidence. While during Sukarno’s Guided Democracy and Suharto’s New Order eras a major aim was to emphasize the unity among Indonesians of different regional and ethnic backgrounds, local particularities became more relevant with the beginning of the reform period in 1998. This resulted in a greater valorization of cultural differences and, hence, also affected vernacular architectures throughout the archipelago. Hand in hand with an increasing interest in the country’s ethnic and cultural diversity, a more critical attitude towards globalization and ‘Westernization’ developed, especially among the intellectual middle class. The support of local arts and crafts and the preservation of valuable antiquities became socially validated. Prestigious vernacular architecture was among such objects of high demand. However, it was not a move ‘back to the roots’ because the ‘rediscovery’ of the vernacular was not restricted to one’s own culture and social class. It was mainly the urban upper middle class, which had adopted a modern, Westerninspired lifestyle that developed a taste for the past and its treasures. Javanese vernacular architecture, for

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instance, became fashionable and traditional Javanese houses became objects of desire. However, these days Javanese customers have to compete with like-minded people in other parts of Indonesia and abroad. Javanese houses can now be found in Jakarta, Bali and even as far away as Chile. Modern technologies, especially the internet and social media, have facilitated and accelerated the trend of delocalizing building traditions.

From culture to heritage, from the local to the national In Indonesia, vernacular architecture is still very much connected to locality, but migration and delocalization of other vernacular objects, knowledge and practices have rapidly increased over the past decade and influenced notions of identity related to persons and things. When social elites revitalize vernacular practices and integrate the objects into their everyday modern lives, these things become components of modernity (or post-modernity) itself. Organizations as well as individuals have increasingly participated in discourses and practices that deal with the valorization and preservation of vernacular culture and its elevation to the status of local or national heritage. Interest in Indonesian cultural diversity is not a new phenomenon but already existed in colonial times. In the early twentieth century, Dutch researchers and administrators identified different adat communities and adat law circles throughout the archipelago. The term adat referred to ‘an entity united by morality, customs, traditions, and legal institutions’.17 Key aspects of an adat community were a common origin and a shared territory. Knowing about regional languages, cultures and traditions, and collaborating with local traditional leaders was beneficial for a successful rule and administration of the country. After Indonesia’s independence, which was finally achieved in 1949, the new leaders strove to ‘put their country on the world map’ and, by being the largest state in Southeast Asia, guaranteeing it an influential position in the region. Art and culture were instrumentalized for their political and economic goals. In the first few decades, under President Sukarno, art was expected to explicitly show its potential as a political and anticolonial force, whereas under Suharto’s New Order rule, art played an indirect and rather implicit role. Art was enculturated so as to highlight its place in local traditions. Regional and local traditions therefore were highlighted as aesthetic expressions that fitted into an acceptable understanding of ‘diversity’; a diversity which did not challenge but rather contributed to the national motto of ‘unity’.18 In order to fulfil their duties in official representations of the Indonesian nation, art and culture had to be picturesque and diverse, but also tame and easily digestible. The focus was on music and dance, traditional costumes and architectures. The aim was less to foster cultural traditions in their original localities than to record and document them for various purposes. Professional and lay researchers as well as film makers carried out these tasks. A primary goal was to present the richness and diversity of Indonesian cultural traditions to outsiders. Colourful pictures of exotic places and people were used to attract international tourists, particularly to western Indonesia. From the 1970s, the tourism industry became an important economic factor in the New Order programme of national development. However, displaying cultural heterogeneity served also a purpose in domestic politics. Television shows regularly broadcasted folkloristic events of music and dance, picturesque villages and beautiful landscapes. They could be interpreted as signs of inclusion into one big nation. Familiarizing its population with Indonesia’s diversity and beauty should further raise the spirit of belonging to one great nation. The ‘Beautiful Indonesia’ Miniature Park (Taman Mini Indonesia Indah) in Jakarta, which was opened in 1975, fulfils a similar task. There, examples of traditional vernacular architecture and selective cultural performances are claimed to represent the large variety of cultural regions. Among the shortcomings of such exhibitions and performances are the obvious limitations in terms of numbers and variety. Furthermore,

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there is a geographical and cultural imbalance because many more examples are taken from western Indonesian regions than from the eastern provinces. This could be explained by the unequal distribution of the population, with approximately 78 per cent living on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali. These, together with Sulawesi, are also the islands with the most developed tourist infrastructures and the largest numbers of international visitors.19 Another reason to attach a higher value to western Indonesian cultures, and hence to make them more visible, was rooted in the history of the archipelago. Even in pre-colonial times, the political and economic powers were situated in the west with the kingdoms of Srivijaya, Majapahit and many others dominating the region for centuries. The political centres of these kingdoms or sultanates were also the cultural centres where refined court arts flourished and were practised by the members of the royal families and nobility. Their classical dances, music and theatre, valuable fabrics and beautiful costumes still form the main bodies of western Indonesia’s high cultures. Popular and adapted versions can be found among all sectors of society and even in small villages. Javanese and Balinese cultural expressions have received the greatest appreciation and recognition as ‘art’ and testimonies of ‘high cultures’. This has made them particularly suitable as national icons of which all Indonesians could be proud of, at least in the eyes of the national authorities, and which have represented Indonesia as a culturally sophisticated nation that can compete at eye-level with other Asian and Western countries.

Fig. 5.3  Javanese gamelan orchestra and shadow puppetry (wayang kulit) at the Sultan’s palace (Kraton) in the city of Yogyakarta, 2019. G. Weichart.

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Focusing rather on ‘traditional’ than on contemporary arts offered several advantages during the New Order period. First and foremost, traditional arts were considered apolitical and therefore unprovocative. Secondly, their status as traditions qualified them as cultural heritage. I follow here Hellman’s argument about the intentional aestheticization of culture and its transformation into heritage with the aim to create and strengthen sentiments of national identity.20 The post-Suharto era of Reformation from 1998 onwards led to radical political decentralization in which the regional and the local received new and special attention. Local politicians and populations increasingly developed self-confidence towards the central government and hegemonic cultures. Regional politics and identities arose and promoted local cultures as markers of regional identities and justification for their striving for relative autonomy. The shift in focus from the national to the local, however, did not diminish the interest in cultural heritage. On the contrary, heritage seemed to be higher up on the agenda of cultural politics than ever. Old heritage organizations flourished and new ones were founded. This development in Indonesia corresponded to a world-wide trend and a global interest in cultural heritage and efforts to protect it. A difference to the past was that local variations and particularities were more appreciated and highlighted. However, ‘Bhinneka Tunggal Ika’ (‘Unity in Diversity’) was still a leading concept and, at least in Java, local heritage continued to serve the national agenda. In 2004, the Indonesian Heritage Trust (Badan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia/BPPI) was established as an umbrella organization for heritage societies from all over Indonesia. A proof of the great interest in the subject and the activities in the heritage sector is that in 2011, BPPI had about fifty member organizations.21 The Indonesian Heritage Cities Network (Jaringan Kota Pusaka Indonesia – JKPI) was established in 2008 as an inter-local government organization in order to develop and facilitate collaboration among cities and districts in safeguarding their natural and cultural heritage. In 2019, JKPI already counted seventy member cities and districts.22 In Java, vernacular architecture is given a prominent place in the agenda of heritage conservation. One of its most passionate ‘activists’ in this field is Laretna T. Adishakti, an architect by training and lecturer/ researcher at the Center for Heritage Conservation within the Department of Architecture and Planning at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta. Apart from many other functions, she co-founded the Jogja Heritage Society (JHS) and still holds a leading position in it.23 The aim of this organization is to rediscover and preserve the historical landscape of the city of Yogyakarta. A key target has been Kotagede, a district of great historical importance in the southeast of the city which contains many old houses, including joglo, and heritage sites. The area was hard hit by the 2006 earthquake and reconstruction has been a major challenge until now. The organizers claim that community participation in all stages of planning and actual rebuilding is the ‘secret’ to the success of their reconstruction and conservation efforts. Gadjah Mada University bought one of the joglos, now called Omah UGM, and rebuilt it to be used as the office of the Heritage Conservation Movement Center.24 Adishakti and her colleagues promote the concept of ‘saujana’. It often is translated as ‘cultural landscape’ and, as such, embraces natural and cultural heritage which is seen as an interwoven ensemble. Apart from the natural landscape and the local architectures, saujana may include different kinds of agriculture, local crafts, customs, rituals and of course the people who inhabit these areas. Moreover, the role of communities in heritage preservation has increasingly been acknowledged and the organizations collaborate with different stakeholders and community leaders. In her keynote speech at ‘The International Seminar in the International Arts Festival: Today’s Art, Future’s Culture’ in Yogyakarta in 2016, Adishakti emphasized that a good relationship with local communities is a key issue because heritage conservation is a cultural movement, and ‘local wisdom’ should be heard.25 In order to achieve such cooperation, it is not enough

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to preserve buildings or landscapes, but the local economy needs to be included in the planning process. Heritage preservation should also lead to economic benefits for the local populations, such as creating jobs or other forms of income. Opening up heritage sites for tourism is one such possibility, although its sustainability may be questioned.26 Since 1998, Indonesia has gone through several phases of instability, due to political unrest, terrorist attacks and, most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic which have stopped international tourism altogether. In the Indonesia Charter for Heritage Conservation 2003, it is made clear that heritage activists do not work towards the preservation of ‘meaningless’ traditions but their aim is to enable a harmonious and sustainable transfer of these traditions into the present by combining local, e.g. Javanese, and modern values and institutions. This way, the people could maintain their Javanese identity and, at the same time, participate in the building or shaping of a modern nation. Like in the past, cultural heritage and its conservation continue to serve as a strategy to foster national development. ‘We [the signatories] believe that heritage conservation in Indonesia will help to affirm the nation’s identity in the world’s very diverse and dynamic community, enhancing the quality of life, and to provide valuable contribution to the world community.’27

Modernity, consumption and religion As I have tried to show in the previous sections, Indonesia’s political leaders in the postcolonial era had to master the challenging task of uniting the country and creating a modern nation state. Nationalism and modernization, therefore, became key slogans that have not lost their attraction, even more than seventy years after the declaration of independence. In the times of Orde Baru, modernization predominantly meant ‘development’ (pembangunan) that focused on technological and economic progress following Western models. When it came to political development, the West was less of a model because President Suharto did not intend to establish a Western-style democracy. The rapid changes in the economic and technological sectors also had a great impact on the society. Increased production and import of consumer goods led to changing lifestyles, especially among the urban population. A rapid expansion of consumerism and new forms of conspicuous consumption marked the 1990s, not only in Indonesia but throughout Southeast Asia.28 Vernacular cultures were mainly appreciated when manifested in folkloristic objects or performances, as things of the past that belonged to museums. Beyond the museum context, vernacular architecture, too, was only selectively accepted by the government authorities. Most traditional architectures were deemed unhealthy and unsuitable for contemporary life and should therefore be replaced by ‘modern’ houses. A standard variant of such a modern house was ‘exported’ from Java even to the farthest corners of the archipelago.29 Some specimen of traditional houses should be maintained for tourist attractions. It became popular, however, to apply vernacular architectural styles onto new public buildings, especially in provincial towns, where they could function as markers of regional identities. The economic crisis, which started in 1997 and led to President Suharto’s resignation in the following year, brought some of the greatest changes in Indonesian history since its independence. The political change to a democracy brought autonomy and freedom at the provincial and regional levels. It also meant greater freedom of expression and other civil rights. Nonetheless, development and consumption remained important issues. The expansion of conspicuous consumption could be witnessed especially in the growing numbers of shopping centres and malls in all major cities but also in many smaller towns. According to the Indonesian Shopping Center Association (APPBI), in early 2020 the country counted 321 shopping centres of various styles and sizes.30 The largest number is situated in Java. In 2014, more than 170 malls

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were counted in the city of Jakarta alone. Politicians finally recognized that severe problems, like land scarcity and traffic congestion, resulted from such ‘mushrooming’ development. The then deputy governor of Jakarta, Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama, confirmed the ban of new shopping centres since 2012.31 However, developments continued in other cities, with Surabaya in East Java taking on a leading role. In 2020, the ‘Lifestyle’ section of the English-language newspaper The Jakarta Post presented Pakuwon Mall, Supermall and Pakuwon Trade Center, which reopened in 2017 and covered an area of 30 hectares in Surabaya, as the biggest shopping complex in the Indonesia.32 Pakuwon Mall’s motto ‘Not just shopping, it’s a lifestyle’ summarizes the purpose of these numerous and extensive ‘temples of consumption’ which attract people of all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.33 Although malls can be entered free of charge and, in theory, therefore are open to everybody, class differences play a role. The luxurious centres in wealthy urban areas are mostly visited by middle- and upper-class customers, whereas people of lower social classes rather frequent comparably ‘modest’ shopping centres. The ‘luxury malls’ focus on international shops and brands and, thus, resemble similar malls

Fig. 5.4  Modern shopping mall in Gresik, East Java, 2022. G. Weichart.

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in Western and other Asian countries. However, over the past few decades, growing numbers of shops with Islamic dress have opened which have reflected changes in attitudes towards religion, but also in fashion and taste among the potential customers. With the end of the New Order regime and the beginning of ‘reformasi’ in 1998, the individual regions were searching for their own specific identities in contrast to ‘Jakarta’ where not only the political power but also the socio-cultural hegemony was meant to be. At the same time, the ‘West’, too, has lost some of its attraction. Critical attitudes towards Western influences, consumption habits and lifestyles could be observed. It probably is no coincidence that religious groups have gained influence during those years and public expressions of religious beliefs and practices have increased.34 To a Western observer, this social and political development may seem to be a trend towards conservatism and anti-modernity. However, it is a complex issue and terms like ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ may take on different meanings according to the context. Indonesia does not have an official state religion but the belief in a Supreme Being is mentioned in the constitution. It constitutes one of the five pillars upon which the independent state was founded (Pancasila). The vast majority of Indonesians, 88 per cent, adhere to Islam which is the dominant religion in Java. There are Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities and since 2017 Indigenous faiths are also officially accepted ‘religions’.35 The embeddedness of Islam into Javanese culture and their mutual influences have been extensively studied by anthropologists, sociologists, historians and others.36 For a long time, the dominant view, as expressed by Geertz and others, was that, despite hundreds of years of Islamic influence, Javanese culture maintained many of its pre-Islamic particularities and Islam had to adapt and integrate into these traditions.37 The syncretistic characteristics were highlighted and differences from many other Islamic countries were emphasized. In more recent times, critics have argued that the role of Islam and its influence on Javanese culture have been underestimated.38 Woodward takes the slametan prayer meal as an example. While Geertz understood the slametan as an animistic rite to reinforce social solidarity among village people, Woodward interpreted it as a local Javanese variation of a typically Islamic ritual found in large parts of the Islamic world.39 The slametan is just one of many examples that show how Islamic and Javanese traditions have been interwoven and cannot always be disentangled easily. This is not surprising given the fact that Islam arrived in Java in the early fifteenth century. The discourse about beliefs and influences, their origins and age, raises not only questions about legitimacy and truth, but also about concepts of tradition and modernity among different religions and religious movements.40 The two largest Islamic organizations in Indonesia, Muhammadiyah (founded 1912 in Yogyakarta) and Nadhlatul Ulama (founded 1926 in Surabaya), with 90 million claimed members, are such examples. Both organizations are particularly successful and influential in Java. Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) has a rather ‘conservative’ background with its representatives and followers being more open to syncretistic beliefs and practices (kejawen). The organization is associated with the Wali Songo, the nine saints who are believed to have brought Islam to Java.41 Furthermore, NU is better established in rural areas and runs many of the pesantren, the Islamic boarding schools. Muhammadiyah, on the contrary, represents a ‘modernist’ and reformist Islam, a ‘purer’ version of Islam which has been influenced by Wahhabi Salafism of Saudi Arabia and follows more closely the scripture. It is popular among the educated urban middle class who reject Javanese kebatinan42 as being ‘un-Islamic’ and contrary to the normative understanding of ‘agama’ (religion).43 Although both organizations are still believed to be complementary opposites with divergent orientations, as they were in the early and mid-twentieth century, they have in fact substantially converged over the years.44

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Since the turn of the millennium, Islam has taken on a more prominent role in Indonesian politics as well as in social and cultural life. In Javanese everyday life, it can be observed that Islamic prescriptions, like prayer times, fasting, rituals and, most visibly, dress codes are followed by more people and more strictly than a few decades ago. Such stricter regulations and interpretations of Islam seem to be especially attractive to the rising middle class, including the intellectual elite, who consider themselves as ‘modern’. In her account on pious middle-class women, Rinaldo claims that they have adopted an Islamic habitus ‘that is oriented toward modernity and accords with essentialized, though not necessarily traditional, notions of gender’.45 She agrees with other scholars who argued in the 1990s already that Islamic ‘revival’ has overturned long-held assumptions that modernity always goes hand in hand with secularism. A controversial and often cited example is the headscarf or ‘veil’ (hijab) worn by Muslim women. The hijab was not part of the traditional Javanese clothing and only few women wore it before the turn of the millennium. For some of those younger Javanese women who wore the hijab already then, it was an attempt to escape the confines of non-Islamic tradition but also expressed their opposition towards secular modernity. They adopted a sense of ‘modern Muslim identity’ through self-discipline and self-reconstruction.46 In the 2000s, veiling was no longer an act of resistance towards local traditional values but rather an effort ‘to accommodate three forces within their lives, namely Javanese culture, the ideology of Islam, and modernity’.47 Twenty years later, veiling has become the standard clothing for Muslim women in Java. Many of them would not leave the house or receive guests without wearing the hijab. Following Islamic rules, including dress code, and being a modern, self-confident and fairly independent person, is not a contradiction for many Javanese women today. By giving these examples, the authors argue that there is not just one (Western) concept and interpretation of modernity but there are multiple, trans-local and trans-cultural modernities.48 Pious Muslim women, and men, may reject configurations of Western or global modernity, but they also do not want to follow their own local traditions anymore. This may explain how and why stricter teachings of Islam are attractive alternatives to a growing number of followers. We may ask now which role vernacular culture plays in an environment that seems to be torn between Western or global consumerism and Islamic piety. As I have shown in the previous sections, the urban middle classes, many of them pious Muslims as well as consumers in shopping centres, are also those who are most interested in the revitalization and promotion of vernacular traditions and in their acceptance as local or national cultural heritage. This can be especially observed in the city of Yogyakarta which likes to present itself as the ‘cultural capital’ of Java. Local arts and crafts are sold in hundreds of outlets that spread throughout the city. Batik cloths of all styles, qualities and prices as well as products made of batik are particularly popular among international and domestic visitors but also among the local population. Expensive ‘luxury’ products are presented in special galleries and upmarket shopping centres. But the vast majority of products are sold in more modest shops and at local markets and they are affordable even for the lower middle classes. While in some other parts of Indonesia, cultural traditions or vernaculars have disappeared or are ‘endangered’, Yogyakarta is ‘different’, as many of its residents would say. It is best known, in Indonesia and abroad, for being a vibrant modern city as well as a place of ancient history and traditions. Yogyakarta is a place where the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, meet and are enjoyed or consumed by different social groups and classes. Responsible for this seemingly harmonious relationship between tradition and modernity may be the city’s relative political stability and its direct link to the past. The Sultanate of Yogyakarta looks back to a history of more than 250 years and still enjoys the support of its people. Yogyakarta is a centre of education with a lively youth and student culture. It is ruled by a hereditary

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monarch and the Islamic organization Muhammadiyah is well established there. Many of the city’s inhabitants are devout Muslims who are proud of its long history and local culture. Yogyakarta is a modern, but not a secular city. It has been shaped by different traditions, cultures and influences, of which Javanese, Western and Islamic are only some examples. Migration and other forms of cultural exchange with other regions in Indonesia and other Asian countries, other religions, etc., have left their traces too.49 Returning to our focus on vernacular culture, art and architecture, I would like to emphasize again that people of different age as well as socio-economic, cultural or religious background in Yogyakarta and other parts of Central Java, have shown particular interest in local traditions, cultural performances and artefacts. An explanation may be the cultural continuity and high prestige Central Javanese culture has enjoyed within the country as well as abroad. Cultural performances like wayang kulit, the shadow puppet play, classical dance and gamelan music or ritual processions always attract many participants and visitors. However, in Yogyakarta like everywhere else, traditions are not static and artists experiment with new forms of expression based on traditional or vernacular art. Regarding architecture and interior design, we could observe, especially in the past decade, a growing interest and appreciation of vernacular styles, materials and products. This has affected the private as well as public spheres. People do not only buy old houses or have new ones built in the traditional styles, but also furnish them accordingly and decorate the rooms with objects identified as Javanese (e.g. wayang figures, other wooden statues, paintings, photographs, textiles). While this has been going on since colonial times, just slightly varying details, the number of people who care about it and are prepared to invest money and time in such buildings has increased. A growing number of restaurants, warungs50 and cafes in and around Yogyakarta have followed a new trend of ‘vernacularizing’ the place as well as the food and drink they sell. This can affect the whole building by using a joglo, limasan or another old-style vernacular building. The interior design of some places has been adapted to traditional Javanese houses of higher social classes by using old wooden furniture, or having new ones made that look old. After all, the idea is to create a ‘typical Javanese ambience’. However, many places do not stick to a homogeneous, ‘authentic’ Javanese style, but it is a rather eclectic selection of things and styles. Additionally, they may serve traditional Javanese food and drinks in these restaurants and cafes. There is much to ‘discover’ and experience. The lavishly furnished and decorated rooms create a comfortable and homey atmosphere, although most customers’ homes probably look very different, and they may evoke nostalgic feelings for the (colonial) past. The cheaper warungs and cafés are especially popular among the younger generations. Frequenting these gastronomic establishments has become part of a middle-class lifestyle, of going out, not just for a quick meal but for spending time together, not only with family but with friends and colleagues – a ‘modern’ lifestyle, set in a vernacular Javanese environment.

Conclusion In Indonesia, like in other parts of the world, traditional values and ways of living have been stigmatized as backward, conservative and unsuitable for our modern times. Urban dwellers especially do not want to live like their parents and grandparents did in rural and often remote villages. Aspirations for modern lifestyles, associated with socio-economic improvement, better education and more personal freedom, are not new phenomena. They were already present in the nineteenth century under Dutch colonialism.51 Until quite recently, modernity was associated with the West, from which modern goods and ideas were expected to come. This outlook was encouraged by the Indonesian government under President Suharto’s long-term leadership. The Reform era that followed from 1998 onwards, however, saw greater diversity of

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perspectives and interpretations of modernity. New influences in popular culture, fashion and lifestyle came from other Asian countries, especially China, Korea and Japan. The West no longer held a ‘monopoly’ on the future. On the contrary, critical voices questioned the validity and suitability of Western modernity for Asian, and particularly Indonesian, societies and people. Political and social liberalization led to cultural diversification. This saw religious forces gain influence and power. Reformist Islamic movements, financially and ideologically supported by Islamic groups in the Middle East, became stronger with many of their followers belonging to the growing urban middle-classes who had benefitted from Suharto’s development programme. Piety and consumption, however, were not thought to be contradictory, but fitted under the umbrella of an ‘alternative’ modernity that did not follow Western claims for secularization. Within this social context, religious movements, Christian as well as Islamic, have been critical of pre-­ Islamic and pre-Christian traditions; but many of the old beliefs and customs have survived to the present day. The majority who still observe them live in rural areas, but the influence of these traditions can be found in all sectors of Indonesian society. Traditionalists, moreover, have become critical of Western modernization and materialism which are seen as responsible for environmental destruction and social disintegration.52 While religious beliefs and practices have the potential to be divisive forces, ‘culture’ and the arts have proven to be bridges between different groups in Javanese society. Again, it is the educated urban middle classes who have been particularly active in supporting the continuation and revitalization of local traditions in music, dance, batik and architecture in the past few decades. However, not everything old or ‘traditional’ has attracted the same level of attention. The material and intangible cultural manifestations that once were reserved for members of the royal courts and aristocracy are still greatly admired and deemed essential to preserve. The joglo houses exemplify this clearly. Neither class nor ethnicity now determines access to objects of Javanese high culture. While in the past the joglo and batik cloths were examples of hereditary distinction between the nobility and the common people, they have been turned into commodities that can be acquired by almost anyone who can afford them. Javanese high culture still functions as an aesthetic tool of distinction, but instead of descent, the criteria on display are wealth, sophistication and ‘fine taste’. As Bourdieu explained in detail, the bourgeoisie imitates and follows the habitus of the aristocracy.53 By vernacularizing and ‘democratizing’ Javanese high culture, it has become accessible to large parts of society. Moreover, it has played an instrumental role in Indonesian nation-building and nationalism. This ‘culturalizing’ of Javanese architecture and art has rendered its pre-Islamic roots as well as socio-political functions less pronounced. This way, Javanese culture has proven capable of being selectively embraced by people of different religious or political orientations. Its traditions have become an essential part of Indonesian cultural heritage, while simultaneously embraced within the lifestyles of a modern social elite that seeks to enjoy the best of ‘all’ worlds.

Notes 1. Hermann Mückler, ‘Einführung. Tradition und Traditionalismus: Zur Rolle und Instrumentalisierung eines Identitätskonzepts’, in Tradition und Traditionalismus: Zur Rolle und Instrumentalisierung eines Identitätskonzepts, ed. Hermann Mückler and Gerald Faschingeder (Wien: Verein für Geschichte und Sozialkunde, Promedia Verlag, and Südwind, 2012), 7–24. 2. ‘Vernacular’, Cambridge Dictionary, accessed 6 April 2021, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ vernacular. 3. Paul Oliver, Built to Meet Needs: Cultural Issues in Vernacular Architecture (Amsterdam: Architectural Press, Elsevier, 2006), 4.

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4. Clare Nash, Contemporary Vernacular Design: How British Housing Can Rediscover Its Soul (Newcastle upon Tyne: RIBA Publishing, 2016), 2. 5. Josef Prijotomo, ‘Javanese (Java)’, in Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, 2, ed. Paul Oliver (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1115–16. 6. In the old Mataram capital of Kotagede many joglo date back two hundred years. Punto Wijayanto, ‘Community Participation in Heritage Conservation in Kotagede’, in Proceedings Arte-Polis 3 International Conference. Creative Collaboration and the Making of Place: Learning from Shared Creative Experiences, Architecture Program, School of Architecture, Planning and Policy Development, Institute of Technology Bandung, 22–24 July 2010, ed. Ahmad Rida Soemardi et al. (Bandung: Institute of Technology Bandung, 2010), 118. 7. U. J. Cahyono, A. Farkhan and P. S. Nugroho, ‘Continuity of Tradition: Vernacularity of the Modern Javanese House Transformation in Laweyan, Surakarta’, IOP Conference Series. Earth and Environmental Science 447 (2020): 1–10. 8. Cahyono, Farkhan and Nugroho, ‘Continuity of Tradition’, 7. 9. Xiaoxin Zhao and Kelly Greenop, ‘From “Neo-Vernacular” to “Semi-Vernacular”: A Case Study of Vernacular Architecture Representation and Adaptation in Rural Chinese Village Revitalization’, International Journal of Heritage Studies: IJHS 25 (2019): 1132. The authors argue that ‘[s]emi-vernacular architecture is the combined work of original vernacular architecture and new architects’ designs and construction. It expresses and differentiates building characteristics from different time periods, adapts the buildings to contemporary life modes, and conserves the historical significance and local memory of the vernacular buildings, while supporting local vernacular building skills.’ 10. Gabriele Weichart and Karl Valent, ‘The Material and the Social: Vernacular Architecture in Transformation’, Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies in Architecture 10 (2017): 6–14. 11. Gabriele Weichart, ‘Javanese Architecture between Heritage and Mobility’, Fabrications 30, no. 1 (2020): 25–43. 12. Gerry van Klinken, ‘Introduction: Democracy, Markets and the Assertive Middle’, in In Search of Middle Indonesia: Middle Classes in Provincial Towns, ed. Gerry van Klinken and Ward Berenschot (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014), 1–32. 13. Lilie Suratminto, ‘Educational Policy in the Colonial Era’, Historia: International Journal of History Education XIV, no. 1 (June 2013): 77–84. 14. Wasisto Raharjo Jati, ‘The Indonesia Middle Class: A Conceptual Debate’, Masyarakat 22 (2017): IV. 15. E.g. see Solvay Gerke, ‘Global Lifestyles under Local Conditions: The New Indonesian Middle Class’, in Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and Identities, ed. Chua Beng-Huat (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 135–58; Gerry van Klinken and Ward Berenschot (eds.), In Search of Middle Indonesia: Middle Classes in Provincial Towns (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014); and Vissia Ita Yulianto, Reframing Modernities in Contemporary Indonesia: An Ethnographic Study of Ideas of Center and Periphery on Sulawesi and Java (Berlin: regiospectra Verlag, 2015). 16. Gerke, ‘Global Lifestyles’, 151. 17. Yance Arizona and Erasmus Cahyadi, ‘The Revival of Indigenous Peoples: Contestations over a Special Legislation on Masyarakat Adat’, in Adat and Indigeneity in Indonesia: Culture and Entitlements between Heteronomy and Self-Ascription, ed. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2013), 46–7. 18. Jörgen Hellman, Performing the Nation: Cultural Politics in New Order Indonesia (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2003). 19. In 2019, Indonesia counted 16.11 million visitors. R. Hirschmann, ‘Number of International Visitor Arrivals Indonesia 2011–2019’, Statista, 11 December 2020, accessed 7 April 2021, https://www.statista.com/ statistics/707633/number-of-international-visitor-arrivals-in-indonesia/. 20. Hellman, ‘Performing the Nation’; Jörgen Hellman, ‘Living Together with Ancestors: Cultural Heritage and Sacred Places on West Java’, International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage 5, no. 1 (2017): 78–88.

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21. ‘Indonesia Heritage Trust’, Shared Cultural Heritage, accessed 7 April 2021, https://sharedheritage.­dutchculture. nl/en/location/indonesia-heritage-trust. 22. Gaura Mancacaritadipura, ‘Indonesian City Network, a Good Example for Networking Activities among Local Governments to Safeguard ICH’, ICH Courier Online, accessed 7 April 2021, https://ichcourier.unesco-ichcap. org/indonesian-heritage-city-network-a-good-example-for-networking-­activities-among-local-governments-tosafeguard-ich/. 23. ‘Jogja Heritage Society’, accessed 7 April 2021, http://jogjaheritagesociety.org/. 24. Punto Wijayanto, ‘Community Participation in Heritage Conservation in Kotagede’, in Proceedings Arte-Polis 3 International Conference. Creative Collaboration and the Making of Place: Learning from Shared Creative Experience, Institute of Technology Bandung, Indonesia, 22–24 July 2010, ed. Architecture Program, School of Architecture, Planning and Policy Development, Institute of Technology Bandung (Bandung, 2010), 117–27. 25. Laretna Adishakti, ‘Today’s Art, Future’s Culture: Back to Saujana’, Keynote Speech at The International Seminar in the International Arts Festival: Today’s Art, Future’s Culture, Yogyakarta, Indonesia,

23

November,

2016,

accessed

7

April

2021,

https://www.researchgate.net/

publication/320498651_TODAY’S_ART_FUTURE’S_CULTURE_BACK_TO_SAUJANA. 26. Laretna Adishakti and Dimas Wihardyanto, 3 Posters, ‘1. Annual Field School on Borobudur, Cultural Landscape Heritage Conservation, Indonesia; 2. Indonesia Heritage Year 2003 – Celebrating Diversity, From People to People by People of Indonesia; 3. Indonesia Charter for Heritage conservation 2003’, Third International Exhibition on Monuments Restoration: From Restoration to Preservation. Forty Years of Project and Working, ICOMOS, Ferrara, Italy, 22–25 March 2007, accessed 7 April 2021, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/­340933059_THE_ THIRD_INTERNATIONAL_EXHIBITION_ON_MONUMENTS_RESTORATION_2007_-_2008. 27. Adishakti and Wihardyanto, ‘Monuments Restoration’, 191. 28. Chua Beng-Huat (ed.), Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and Identities (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). 29. Sue Thüler, ‘Gesünder wohnen? Gedanken zur radikalen Umgestaltung von Ngadha Wohnhäusern im Namen von Fortschritt und Hygiene’, in Constructing the Future – Remembering the Past: Houses and Architecture in Southeast Asia, guest ed. Gabriele Weichart, Archiv für Völkerkunde 57–58 special issue (2007): 13–36. 30. ‘Here Are the Five Biggest Shopping Malls in Indonesia’, The Jakarta Post, 15 January 2020, accessed 27 March

2021,

https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2020/01/15/here-are-the-five-biggest-shopping-malls-in-­

indonesia.html. 31. Eddy Kasdiono, ‘Jakarta, a City with Many Shopping Centers’, The Jakarta Post, 31 October 2014, accessed 27

March,

https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/10/31/jakarta-a-city-with-many-shopping-centers.

html#:~:text=With%20over%20170%20malls%2C%20Jakarta,cities%20with%20many%20shopping%20 centers. 32. ‘Five Biggest Shopping Malls’. 33. ‘Pakuwon Mall’, accessed 27 March 2021, https://www.pakuwonmall.com/aboutus. 34. Hellman, ‘Living Together with Ancestors’, 82; van Klinken, ‘Introduction’, 30. 35. Azis Anwar Fachrudin, ‘“Religion” and “Belief” in Indonesia: What’s the Difference?’ New Mandala, 20 December 2017, accessed 30 January 2021, https://www.newmandala.org/religion-belief-indonesia-whats-difference/. 36. E.g. see Andrew Beatty, Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Merle C. Ricklefs, Islamisation and Its Opponents in Java: A Political, Social, Cultural and Religious History, c. 1930 to Present (Singapore: NUS Press Stable, 2012), https://www-jstor-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/ stable/j.ctv1qv3fh; Georg Stauth, Politics and Cultures of Islamization in Southeast Asia: Malaysia and Indonesia in the Nineteen-Nineties (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2002); Mark R. Woodward, Java, Indonesia and Islam (New York: Springer, 2011), 113–36.

Is Indonesian Vernacular the New Modern? 103

37. Geertz, ‘Religion of Java’. 38. E.g. see Muhamad Ali, ‘Catgorizing Muslims in Postcolonial Indonesia’, Moussons: Recherche en sciences humaines sur l’Asie du Sud-Est 11 (2007): 33–62; Ronald Lukens-Bull, A Peaceful Jihad: Negotiating Identity and Modernity in Muslim Java (New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Woodward, ‘Java, Indonesia and Islam’. 39. Mark R. Woodward, ‘The “Slametan”: Textual Knowledge and Ritual Performance in Central Javanese Islam’, History of Religions 28 (1988): 54–89. 40. Lukens-Bull, ‘A Peaceful Jihad’; Ricklefs, ‘Islamisation’. 41. Lukens-Bull, ‘A Peaceful Jihad’; Martin Slama, ‘From Wali Songo to Wali Pitu: The Travelling of Islamic Saint Veneration to Bali’, in Between Harmony and Discrimination: Negotiating Religious Identities within MajorityMinority Relationships in Bali and Lombok, ed. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and David D. Harnish (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2008), 112–43. 42. Kebatinan or kejawen is usually described as traditional Javanese syncretistic beliefs which combine elements of animism, Hinduism, Buddhism as well as Islam. 43. Greg Barton, ‘The Gülen Movement, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama: Progressive Islamic Thought, Religious Philanthropy and Civil Society in Turkey and Indonesia’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 25, no. 3 (2014): 287–301. 44. Barton, ‘Gülen Movement’, 296. 45. Rachel Rinaldo, ‘Muslim Women, Middle Class Habitus, and Modernity in Indonesia’, Contemporary Islam 2 (2008): 24–5; italics in original. 46. Suzanne Brenner, ‘Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and “the Veil”’, American Ethnologist 23, no. 4 (1996): 673–97. 47. Karunia Purna Kusciati, Susilorini and Insiwi Febriary, ‘Trendy Veils: Young Javanese Women between Islam and Modernity’, Humaniora 25, no. 3 (October 2013): 322. 48. Brenner, ‘Reconstructing Self and Society’; Karunia Purna Kusciati, Susilorini, and Insiwi Febriary, ‘Trendy Veils’; Rachel Rinaldo, ‘Muslim Women’. 49. Melanie V. Nertz, ‘“Muslim Modernities” in Makassar and Yogyakarta: Negotiating “the West” as a Frame of Reference’, in Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia, ed. Volker Gottowik (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 155–74; Yulianto, ‘Reframing Modernities’. 50. The term warung can be applied for different styles of eateries. They can range from very simple and non-­ permanent food stalls at the street corner to smallish and rather informal restaurants. 51. Mieke Schouten, Leadership and Social Mobility in a Southeast Asian Society: Minahasa, 1677–1983 (Leiden: KITLV, 1998). 52. Judith Schlehe, ‘Anthropology of Religion: Disasters and the Representations of Tradition and Modernity’, Religion 40 (2010): 112–20. 53. Pierre Bourdieu, Die feinen Unterschiede: Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982).

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6

Adaptive uses of traditional windbreaks and bough shades for Indigenous housing in Australia



TIMOTHY O’ROURKE

Introduction A protracted social housing crisis for Indigenous Australians in the twenty-first century is a legacy of many decades of neglect, failed policies, careless planning and design.1 In many places across the country, this housing crisis still registers a clash between two disparate building traditions that has played out since the beginning of British colonization in the late eighteenth century. Over two centuries, the settler’s imported building traditions created an architectural problem in housing that aggravated disadvantage for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Until the late 1960s, architects had largely dismissed Indigenous building traditions, unaware that anthropologists had documented building types related to customary patterns of settlement during the twentieth century.2 Combined with fragmentary archival evidence of Aboriginal camps, these ethnographic records indicated that a great diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups deployed a suite of shelter types across varied terrains, responsive to climate and social organization. Knowledge of these traditions and their social implications informs the chequered history of Indigenous housing and raises questions about the design of domestic architecture that might help close the gap in living conditions between Indigenous and other Australians. Despite considerable geographic and climatic variation between regions, three types of shelter appear to have had a continent-wide distribution. Used mostly across wet seasons, domical structures varied in size, construction and material availability, but were built in environments that ranged from tropical rainforests to arid deserts. Two other less architecturally conspicuous shelters were also used widely across the continent. This included a shade structure glossed as a bough shelter or bough shade, and the windbreak. Despite fundamental changes to customary settlement patterns, diverse forms of both shelters appear in different types of post-contact settlements. This chapter examines the continued use and adaptation of windbreaks and bough shades, and the relevance of these building traditions to the design of Indigenous social housing. The first part of the chapter describes the windbreak and bough shades documented during the contact phase of colonization. As the frontier radiated out from the early colonial settlements, Indigenous people and their building traditions were affected by dispossession and population decline, a consequence of frontier violence and introduced diseases. The second part of the chapter discusses how Indigenous building traditions were adapted to colonial patterns of settlement which brought about the increasing sedentization of Aboriginal people. This change from transient camps towards sedentary dwellings occurred in planned settlements and self-built camps on the fringes of settler property. The versatile, easy-to-adapt windbreaks and bough shelters persisted in varied Aboriginal domains, extending the liveability of the rudimentary housing in missions and government-controlled settlements.

Over the twentieth century, housing conditions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people varied with place, contact history and jurisdiction. They were either planned with intent, which included missions and government settlements, or tenuously autonomous in the fringe or town camps, in conditions that varied from state to state – the National Government had minimal involvement in Indigenous policy and legislation until 1967.3 From the late 1970s, architects who closely observed Aboriginal camps worked windbreaks into their designs for Indigenous housing and bough shelters infrequently appeared on site plans. The final part of the chapter describes these modest additions to social housing that extended the amenity of the dwelling, confirming preferences for the outdoor social, thermal and ecological environments.

Vernacular repertoires and building types Given the rates at which Aboriginal people were dispossessed of their lands and the transfer of novel technologies through porous frontiers, many of the records of Indigenous dwellings were documented in an era of adaptation to colonization. Comprehensive descriptions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dwellings in use at the threshold of colonization are limited to a relatively small percentage of a continent diverse in cultural, climatic and geographic regions. Despite the unevenness of the records, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that Indigenous groups across the continent built a repertoire of shelter types particular to their environment and related to their local seasonal calendar.4 The choice of shelters was influenced by the climate and patterns of settlement adapted to mobile hunter-gatherer economies integrated with social and ceremonial lifeways, with campsites occupied transiently or for the duration of a particular season.5

Windbreaks Available records indicate that there were few places in Australia where Indigenous people did not construct standalone windbreaks as part of their suite of shelter options.6 They were used throughout diverse environments and climates with their orientation registering the prevailing winds in different seasons. Recorded Indigenous lexicons attest to the widespread distribution of the windbreak shelter.7 (For the Nunggubuyu people of eastern Arnhem Land, a windbreak is yirunbarra, which also means ‘calm’.8) Archival records – occasionally text but mostly images – describe windbreaks diverse in size, materials and construction methods from Tasmania to the Torres Strait Islands, and across the continent from east to west coasts. Windbreaks were typically linear structures that were often curved in plan to provide better protection from cold or uncomfortable breezes. The structures could be hastily assembled for a temporary camp or built as a dwelling for a residential group in a longer-term camp. For daytime use, windbreaks were frequently semi-circular in plan and low in height to allow occupants seated in the ground views of the immediate environment (depending on the stature of an individual, heights much above 700 mm limit sightlines). Effort devoted to construction of a windbreak depended on the duration of stay, purpose and material availability. Temporary windbreaks could be quickly constructed from materials at hand near the camp with often a mix of vegetation – boughs or branches, sheaves or tussocks of grass, or vines formed into a low berm. Windbreaks might be more structured and elaborate if the camps were less transient. Different structural types included a semi-circular array of posts or boughs to support branches, grass or different types of bark. Single sheets of rigid, heat-treated eucalyptus bark located in a semi-circular trench and mounded with sand or soil, formed an effective and durable shelter. Sand or soil mounded around the base of the structure improved the stability and excavation on the leeward side improved the protection from cold winds. In cold seasons, small fires between sleeping positions provided warmth.9

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For the beach-focussed Lardil on Mornington Island, a common type was a low mounded wall of vines and foliage.10 In the Torres Straits, Islanders on Erub and Mer (Darnley and Murray Islands) constructed a tall windbreak of bamboo poles along the beach as the first line of defence for their housing against the strong south-easterly trade winds.11 Windbreaks were regularly added to other dwelling types to extend the amenity for domestic activities, which were primarily conducted outdoors. Although often minimal in materials and effort, the windbreak modified the local environment for a range of different domestic and economic activities from sleeping and cooking to the manufacture of implements.12

Bough shades In both Central Australian languages of Warlpiri and Pitjitjantjara the word for shade malurnpa (W) and wiltja (P) is also used for the types of shelter that provided respite from the sun in warmer seasons. The arid zone wiltja can take different forms, made, for example, from branches arranged in a domical form.13 Across Australia, a common type of shade shelter is square or rectangular in plan and built from pairs of forked tree limbs, used as corner-posts, cantilevered from holes in the ground. The forked ends of the boughs (or saplings, depending on the landscape) support a pole or rail. Across two parallel poles either a layer of branches or a secondary structure is added, sufficient to support the typically lightweight roofing. As shade is the primary purpose, the roof cladding can be foliage or grasses. On western Cape York Peninsula in the early 1930s, anthropologist Lauriston Sharp described a repertoire of shelters that the Yir Yoront employed across different seasons. This included bough shades, which ‘give shade in the dry summer when days are bright and hot’.14 Traditionally, the Aboriginal shades were low in height, built for seated inhabitants who still retained views of the social and natural environment. Like the windbreak, bough shades were a common shelter in the repertoire of dwellings, with the primary structural elements being quite adaptable. The forked post and beam structure was widely used to construct different shelter types. More robust forked-post and pole structures were used as platforms in monsoon regions, and the structure clad with bark for wet weather shelters or foliage for structures used in ceremonies.15

Fig. 6.1  An array of temporary shade structures at a beach camp recorded by Memmott on Mornington Island in 1975. Photograph by Paul Memmott.

Uses of Bough Shades for Indigenous Housing 107

In arid and semi-arid regions, this type of shelter was widely adopted by the early colonial settlers, who translated the Aboriginal names to ‘bough shade’. As the adopted structures expanded in size and purpose, the shades were referred to as ‘bough sheds’, occasionally rendered as ‘bower shed’.16 With longer posts and roof framing, the sheds increased in height and the area of shade expanded, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would adapt these larger structures to more permanent settlement. As a shaded outdoor room, the bough sheds were used for schooling and church services in Indigenous settlements.

Shifting patterns of settlement Even for groups who escaped territorial dispossession, settler expansion and twentieth-century legislation restricted Indigenous people’s mobility and changed patterns of settlement. Urbanization, missionary activity, government reserves and settler pastoralism led to the increasing sedentism of Indigenous people. Demographic changes were often coercive, as in the case of missions and state-administered reserves. Outside of the reserve system, Indigenous families who migrated to towns and cities had slightly more autonomy in fringe camps but were given minimal material assistance for housing.17 Until the 1940s, it is likely that the majority of Indigenous housing across Australia continued to be self-built. In regional and remote places, traditional materials and construction techniques were adapted to the sedentary dwelling in the absence of social housing or other forms of government support.18 Mission settlements were chronically impecunious, underfunded by both their churches and the state. On the state-run settlements, the slow rollout of rudimentary, locally built cottages rarely met housing demand. Windbreaks and bough shades remained highly useful structures in these new sedentary conditions, in self-built towns or pastoral station camps, and in the supervised settlements. Except in a few more isolated regions, other dwelling types in the repertoire – the domical and vaulted wet-weather structures – were replaced by huts and cottages that were more in keeping with colonial precedents and policies of assimilation.19 Small huts or cottages provided space for sleeping; however, in the transition to sedentary settlement, the focus of domestic life remained in the outdoor areas surrounding the enclosed dwelling. In moderating local climatic conditions, windbreaks extended the living areas and outdoor cooking favoured by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In dry seasons, this extended to sleeping outside, with small fires for comfort in colder weather. Although traditional materials were still used into the late twentieth century, windbreaks were constructed from imported building materials when available. Most often salvaged, corrugated iron or steel was widely used (see Figure 6.2). At about 840 mm, the width of one corrugated sheet is a suitable height for most windbreaks, but can be too high for a 360˚ view of the landscape unless part buried in a trench. Longer lengths could be gently curved in plan, and corrugated sheets from rainwater tanks were pre-curved. From the 1930s, durable windbreaks combined corrugated sheet metal with star pickets, a steel fencing post, Y-shaped in cross-section and patented in Australia in 1926. Bough shades were common to fringe camps around towns and pastoral stations, and continued to be used in missions, where the structures often expanded in size for uses beyond dwelling. Timber was still widely used for the structure although in many regions the materials for the roof developed as a hybrid of Aboriginal and settler building materials. Across much of inland Australia, spinifex grass (Triodia spp.), a traditional thatch for domes, was used by both Aboriginal people and settlers as the roofing material for the expanded shade structures. Bundles of the often abundant and durable spinifex were laid over wire-mesh supported by a timber or steel roof structure. Finer gauge wire mesh secured the spinifex thatch, which provided good thermal insulation and longevity in the hot dry climates. In the 1990s, architects adopted this type of construction for large bough shades built for tourists Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park in Central Australia.20

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Fig. 6.2  Shade and windbreak additions to basic housing in Cloncurry in Northwest Queensland, 1974. Steel and timber bough shades extend the living area, sheltered by windbreaks of corrugated steel. Photograph courtesy of the National Archive of Australia.

Although settlers appropriated Indigenous building materials, and a shelter type in the case of the bough sheds, the array of Aboriginal built shelters in town camps were increasingly regarded by municipal governments and settlers as both eyesores and health hazards.21 The settler opprobrium reflected racism and nationwide policies of assimilation of the 1950s, where anything less than a cottage or bungalow would not improve the occupants. Misunderstood at the time, the self-built dwellings in the fringe camps reproduced and adapted Indigenous settlement patterns that were socially and culturally constructed for the new economic conditions. Even with increasing social housing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the 1960s, windbreaks and bough shades added to the amenity of the more modern housing types. From about the late 1960s, the town camps began to attract ethnographic and architectural attention that looked beyond their physical appearance.22 These interests coincided with the increasing delivery of government-supplied housing to country towns and discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander settlements. Contrasts between state-delivered conventional housing and the self-built camps proved fertile ground for architects seeking to design housing that supported social and cultural behaviours.

Housing studies in the 1970s In the early 1970s, environmental psychologist Joseph Reser contrasted Aboriginal people’s use and reaction to conventional housing with the vernacular architecture still constructed in remote settlements in Arnhem Land. In the outstations, Yolngu employed much of their repertoire of traditional

Uses of Bough Shades for Indigenous Housing 109

shelter types, including vaulted bark-clad wet season shelters. Reser found that the new conventional houses were so disruptive to cultural and social behaviours that their residents were experiencing stress.23 He also observed strong preferences for living around both state-supplied housing and traditional dwellings. This persistence of outdoor living was a social imperative, to observe and monitor community members and activities, while also affording environmental surveillance necessary to hunter-gatherer economies. In a response to his eighteen-month study, Reser proposed the question, ‘what is a decent house’ for Aboriginal people in remote areas with little experience of conventional, Western housing. If a house was no longer an instrument of assimilation, a challenge was to accommodate socially and culturally related spatial requirements into a serviced dwelling. In 1967, the National Government gained powers in Indigenous policy that had previously been the preserve of the states. In 1972, policies directed towards Indigenous  self-­ determination replaced assimilation. The 1970s proved to be a decisive decade in the design and evaluation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing. The knowledge gained from the successes and failures of an assortment of housing projects influenced approaches to cross-cultural design for the next five decades. Part of this insight included recognition of the vernacular building traditions, which included adaptations to the conventional housing. From the mid-1970s, Paul Memmott documented three phases of Aboriginal housing on Mornington Island, home of the Lardil people and the site of a Presbyterian mission in the Gulf of Carpentaria.24 Windbreaks and shade structures were part of the traditional Lardil repertoire of shelters, still built using local material in their coastal camps. In the mission’s Aboriginal village, both shelter types were used to moderate the climate for activities around the self-built huts, with corrugated steel the cladding of choice for the adapted repertoire. Built in the early 1970s, the first state-provided houses for the Aboriginal residents were two similar highset, three-bedroom designs. Memmott observed the adjustment of different families in the street of new houses. The ample covered area under the house replaced the need for bough shades, and the slender steel columns permitted an uninterrupted surveillance of the street. The amenity of the shaded ground floor was improved by the addition of windbreaks, and corrugated steel sheets fixed between the columns shielded the under-house occupants and their hearths from trade winds.

In-built windbreaks Observations and analysis of the dwellings in town camps, as well as the way conventional housing was used by Aboriginal people, led to housing designs that included windbreaks as part of the building fabric. In housing designed for the Alice Springs town camps, the low windbreaks were combined with deep verandahs or covered areas that provided the shade of the traditional bough shelters. A small number of architects contributed to developing this design approach, beginning with Julian Wigley whose job in 1976 was to develop housing designs for the town camps around Alice Springs.25 Wigley was employed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Panel (ATSIHP), a small but ambitious nationally funded agency that was seeking to improve Indigenous housing through research, consultation and rigorous evaluation of prototypical designs.26 Over six months, Wigley closely observed, drew and measured the different residential sites at the Mount Nancy town camp, in Alice Springs. Panel architects also sought out relevant anthropological advice on local socio-cultural conditions. Having recently completed an ethnographic study town camps in Alice Springs, Jeff Collmann offered salient advice to the Panel on the social and economic structures of the Alice Springs town camps. Observing how the different camp structures were occupied, Wigley drew

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site plans and sections to analyse the spatial dimensions of the individual camps, comparing these to a conventional house.27 Small, enclosed humpies were used ‘to sleep in, to shelter from rain and cold, and to store belongings’, and much of the daily activities occurred outdoors. Wigley measured and compared areas in the camps as well as the heights of structures, including the humpies and windbreaks: The scale of these camps is considerably smaller than even the smallest conventional house. Not only are the areas occupied much smaller; so also are the heights of the buildings and associated structures. The height of the average windbreak is less than a metre and allows a sitting man to see over the top of it and beyond.28

Based on his analyses, Wigley developed conceptual plans for housing that attempted to accommodate the domestic social patterns that he had observed at the different Mt Nancy camps. The plans emphasized internal connections to generous, covered outdoor areas, and were adjusted after extensive consultation with each residential group.29 As the houses at Mt Nancy were under construction, the Panel’s design research, prototyping and evaluation ended abruptly in 1978. Fortunately for housing design in the town camps, the Panel’s director Michael Heppell negotiated a path for the architectural methods to continue in Alice Springs. One of the three full-time ATSIHP architects Wally Dobkins was employed to establish an architectural office within the Tangatjira Council (later renamed Tangentyere), which was the Aboriginal-run organization established to deliver services to the Alice Springs town camps. Dobkins worked with different town camps on housing designs, extending the planning principles developed by Wigley at Mt Nancy.30 Covered external areas with low masonry walls serving as windbreaks were a common feature of the early Tangatjira house plans (Figure 6.3). Within this office, Dobkins, and subsequent Tangentyere Design architects, were able to adjust their designs in response to consultation and evaluations of a growing number of housing types.31 The Tangatjira housing designs continued the use of covered external areas responding to social preferences, but also located windbreaks to suit seasonal climatic conditions, both prevailing winds and solar access. Often located on opposite elevations, the in-built windbreaks extended the amenity of the outdoor rooms, attempting to maintain the visual connection to the local social environment. As Wigley’s studies of Mt Nancy had demonstrated, the location of the outdoor spaces and windbreaks and shades were positioned relative to sightlines to adjacent camps and thoroughfares. If monitoring of the social environment was to be part of a design brief, the size, solidity and functions of the conventional house presented a difficult challenge for the architects. From the 1980s, social housing programmes for Indigenous communities struggled to replicate the type of consultative approach and evaluation developed by the Housing Panel and continued by architects at Tangentyere Design.32 One noteworthy exception was the Australian Government-funded National Aboriginal Health Strategy (NAHS), which led to a Indigenous social housing programme delivered between 1990 and 2003. Under this initiative, the commission for architects included extensive design consultation with the future residents of new social housing within Indigenous communities. Under the NAHS housing programme, architect Deborah Fisher designed houses for different Indigenous communities, having previously worked at Tangentyere Design between 1992 and 1998.33 Many of Fisher’s NAHS designs for remote settlements recognized the significance of outdoor space, modified by shaded areas and windbreaks. A small number of regional architectural practices contributed designs of similar quality for the NAHS programme including Troppo architects and Simon Scally out of Darwin.34 In 2014, the Perth architectural practice Iredale Pedersen Hook (IPH) designed housing for the remote Western Australian Aboriginal community of Tjuntjuntjara, established by survivors of the atomic testing

Uses of Bough Shades for Indigenous Housing 111

Fig. 6.3  New housing designed by Tangentyere Design architects for one of the town camps in Alice Springs, Central Australia, 1987. The house design features generous covered verandahs, with low masonry windbreaks (about 750 mm high) for protection against cold breezes. Photograph by Paul Memmott.

at Maralinga in the late 1980s. The housing project was funded by the British Government, which had compensated members of the community for their 1950s testing. The project reflected IPH’s experience in Indigenous social housing in different settings, but also applied design processes initiated by the Aboriginal Housing Panel.35 Their approach involved thorough consultation, aided by a multidisciplinary team that included an anthropologist.36 Led by architect Finn Pedersen, the team designed two housing types both with extensive, outward-facing covered areas, which combined deep verandahs and breezeways. At strategic locations, windbreaks were built in line with the verandah posts, extending the amenity of the concrete-floored verandahs and defining outdoor rooms for both day and night-time use. With residential numbers often variable, the protected areas were designed to cater for visitors (Figure 6.4). The limited published examples of in-built windbreaks in Indigenous social housing suggest that this modest design feature is not widespread. Where architects have included bough shades on site plans, the standalone structures are vulnerable to landscaping budgets that are frequently cut due to building cost overruns. Open carports can offer the same amenity as a bough shed but are much more likely to escape the same budgetary scrutiny as a feature of a landscaping contract at the end of a project. This design tactic was knowingly deployed by IPH across social housing projects for Indigenous families in the suburbs of Kununurra, a small remote town in northern Australia.37 Compared to the architectural examples, there are many more examples of bough shades retrofitted to yards in social housing, built by the tenants themselves or by community housing organizations. This is very much the case for the town of Dajarra in North West Queensland, where researchers have examined the

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Fig. 6.4  Housing designed for Aboriginal families at Tjuntjuntjara by Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects in 2014. Extensive covered outdoor areas with windbreaks provide shelter for short-term visitors. Photograph by Peter Bennetts.

self-built and social housing over five decades, beginning in the early 1970s. Between 1973 and 1975, Paul Memmott documented the use and construction of the town camps on the fringes of Dajarra. Windbreaks and shade structures extended the living environment around the ‘humpies’, small shacks built from bush timber and corrugated metal cladding. From the 1970s, the town campers moved into housing provided by the state government or the Aboriginal community controlled housing co-operative. In a study of place attachment in Dajarra in the late 1990s, Stephen Long recorded the use of windbreaks adjacent to different types of social housing to create outdoor rooms, used for cooking and sleeping.38 Based on preferences for outdoor living, the shelters were still being built a decade later, with the local co-operative housing provider constructing steel-framed bough shades and windbreaks in the yards of existing housing (Figure 6.5).39 In contrast to the Aboriginalcontrolled provider, social housing provided by the state had no such structures.

Conclusion Visual records of Indigenous housing and domestic settings provide ample evidence that windbreaks and shade structures have been a feature of the different settlement types occupied by Indigenous Australians since colonization: from semi-autonomous town camps to the coercive environments of the mission stations. Windbreak and shade structures built in the twenty-first century clearly reference the forms and functions of pre-colonial structures. In either the curtilage of a camp or within the fenced yard of social housing, the two types of shelter chronicle a preference for living around, rather than inside, enclosed dwellings.40 Despite the

Uses of Bough Shades for Indigenous Housing 113

Fig. 6.5  An outdoor kitchen protected by a corrugated steel and star picket windbreak adjacent to Ronnie Condren's small, one-bedroom house, Dajarra 2008. Photograph by Tim O'Rourke.

sustained use of housing by the state to change the behaviour of Indigenous Australians, the persistent use of the two traditional shelters enabled and maintained distinctive forms of Indigenous sociality. The seasonal location and orientation of the windbreaks, and the use of bough shades, are also an index of the local weather patterns, so often ignored by mainstream housing programmes. The belated recognition by Australian institutions of Indigenous seasonal categories in different regions redresses the place-based knowledge that can inform the settlers how to occupy Indigenous lands.41 The continuity of traditional structures in town camps and mission settlements in the 1970s offered a stock of vernacular precedents for architects seeking to design more culturally appropriate Indigenous housing. Both types, it could be argued, led to improvements in housing design. Although this type of design practice is limited, knowledge of the adapted traditions is still relevant to how architects and governments respond to the social and environmental parameters of an ongoing crisis in housing for Indigenous Australians.

Notes 1. Indigenous Australians refers to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who occupied distinct territories prior to colonization. The more specific terms are used when they refer to the history or traditions of a clearly identified group.

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2. Donald Thomson, ‘The Seasonal Factor in Human Culture Illustrated from the Life of a Contemporary Nomadic Group’, Prehistoric Society Proceedings, 5 (1939): 209–21; W. Lloyd Warner, A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). 3. The exception was the Northern Territory of Australia, which was administered by the National Government from 1911 until 1978, when it was granted responsible government. 4. Thomson, ‘The Seasonal Factor’; Warner, A Black Civilization; David Biernoff, ‘Pre and Post European Designs of Aboriginal Settlement: The Case of the Nunggubuyu of Eastern Arnhem Land’, Man-Environment Systems 4, no. 5 (1974): 273–82; Paul Memmott, ‘Lardil Properties of Place: An Ethnological Study in Man-environment Relations’, PhD Thesis (The University of Queensland, 1980). 5. Nicolas Peterson, ‘Camp Site Location amongst Australian Hunter-gatherers: Archaeological and Ethnographic Evidence for a Key Determinant’, Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in Oceania 8, no. 3 (1973): 173–93. 6. The author found scant archival record of the use of windbreaks in the Wet Tropics Region, which receives high annual rainfall and a limited, less predictable dry season. Despite this, Aboriginal languages in the region include words for windbreak: see R.M.W. Dixon, The Words of Our Country: Stories, Place Names, and Vocabulary in Yidiny (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1991), 194. 7. For examples, see R.M.W. Dixon (ed.), Aboriginal Words (Macquarie Park, N.S.W.: Macquarie Library, 1995), 28,  47, 62, 108, 131, 221, 276; Nicholas Evans, Kayardild Dictionary and Thesaurus: A Vocabulary of the Language of the Bentinck Islanders, North-West Queensland (Melbourne: University of Melbourne Dept. of Linguistics and Language Studies, 1992). 8. Jeffery Heath, Nunggubuyu Dictionary (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1982), 287, 307. 9. For illustrations of different windbreak types, see: Paul Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie Wurley: The Aboriginal Architecture of Australia (St Lucia, Queensland: Universty of Queensland Press, 2007), 59–63, 153, 164. 10. Memmott, ‘Lardil Properties of Place’, 138–40. 11. Stephen Long, ‘Transformed by Tradition: The Architectural Traditions of Erub Island, Torres Strait’, in Cultural Crossroads, Proceedings of the 26th Society of Architectural Historians, Australian and New Zealand Conference ed. Julia Gatley (Auckland: SAHANZ, 2009), 1–29. 12. Philip Batty, Lindy Allen and John Morton (eds.), The Photographs of Baldwin Spencer (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2005), 91, 95. 13. Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie &Wurley, 47, 230–1; Mervin Meggitt, Desert People (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1974), 76. 14. Lauriston Sharp, ‘Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians’, Human Organization, 11: 2 (1952), 18. 15. Biernoff, ‘Pre and Post European Designs’; Thomson, ‘The Seasonal Factor’. 16. Paul Memmott and Peter Kelleher, ‘2.II.1.f Kimberley Settlers (Western Australia’, in Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, ed. Paul Oliver (Cambridge; New York, NY; USA: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1076. 17. C. D. Rowley, Outcasts in White Australia (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1971). 18. Rowley, Outcasts in White Australia. 19. Wet season dwellings with vaulted stringy bark roofs continued to be built in the remote outstations in Arnhem Land in the 1970s. See, for example, Joseph Reser, ‘Values in Bark’, Hemisphere 22, no.10 (1978): 26–35. 20. Timothy O’Rourke, ‘Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and Contemporary Architecture in Australia’, in The Handbook of Indigenous Architecture, ed. Elizabeth Grant, Kelly Greenop, Albert Refiti and Daniel Glenn (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 427–8. 21. Rowley, Outcasts in White Australia, 217. 22. Jeff Collmann, Fringe-dwellers and Welfare: The Aboriginal Response to Bureaucracy (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1988); Basil Sansom, The Camp at Wallaby Cross: Aboriginal Fringe Dwellers in Darwin (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1980).

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23. Joseph Reser, ‘What Is a Decent House: An Examination of Some Cultural Assumptions’, The Aboriginal Health Worker 1 (1977): 71–8. 24. Memmott, ‘Lardil Properties of Place’, 126–44, 336–59. 25. Michael Heppell and Julian Wigley, Blackout in Alice: A History of the Establishment and Development of Town Camps in Alice Springs (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1981). 26. Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie &Wurley, 58–9. 27. Heppell and Wigley, 128–51. 28. Heppell and Wigley, 144. 29. Heppell and Wigley, 128–71. 30. Wally Dobkins was the last fulltime architect appointed to the Housing Panel, having worked on housing projects in Africa. 31. Jane Dillon and Mark Savage, ‘House Design in Alice Springs Town Camps’, in Take 2: Housing Design in Indigenous Australia, ed. Paul Memmott (Red Hill, A.C.T.: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2003) 44–7; Jane Dillon and Mark Savage, ‘Tangentyere Council’, Architectural Review 184 (1988): 96–7; Walter Dobkins, ‘Styles, Building Materials, Tools and Techniques in Aboriginal Shelters’, in The Application of Science and Technology to Aboriginal Development in Central Australia (Alice Springs: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, 1986); Andrew Broffman, ‘An Architecture of Listening’, Architecture Australia 97, no. 5: (September 2008), 90–5. 32. See Paul Memmott, ‘The Development of Aboriginal Housing Standards in Central Australia: The Case Study of Tangentyere Council’, in Evaluating Housing Standards and Performance (Housing Issues 4), ed. Bruce Judd and Peter Bycroft (Red Hill, A.C.T.: Royal Australian Institute of Architects National Education Division, 1989), 115–43. 33. Deborah Fisher and Simon Scally, ‘The Detail of Things’, Architecture Australia 97 no. 5 (September 2008): 96–104. 34. Fisher and Scally, ‘the Detail of Things’; Timothy O’Rourke, ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Domestic Architecture in Australia’, in The Handbook of Indigenous Architecture, ed. Elizabeth Grant, Kelly Greenop, Albert Refiti and Daniel Glenn (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 45–7. 35. Narelle Yabuka, ‘Tjuntjuntjara Housing’, Architecture Australia 96 no. 3 (May 2007). 36. Yabuka, ‘Tjuntjuntjara Housing’. 37. Adrian Iredale ‘Kununarra Transitional Housing’, Architecture Australia 115 no. 1 (2016): 69–73. 38. Stephen Long ‘Gidyea Fire: A Study of the Transformation and Maintenance of Aboriginal Place Properties on the Georgina River’, PhD diss. (The University of Queensland, 2005). 39. Jenine Godwin, ‘Livin’ the DJ Way’: Aboriginal housing and health in Dajarra, (PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, 2014); Timothy O’Rourke and Daphne Nash, ‘Aboriginal Yards in Remote Australia: Adapting Landscapes for Indigenous Housing’, Landscape and Urban Planning 182 (2018): 124–32. 40. Reser made this observation on the use of houses in Arnhem Land during his fieldwork in the early 1970s. 41. Australian Bureau of Meteorology, ‘Indigenous Weather Knowledge’, http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml.

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7

Building on Indigenous homelands in Arnhem Land since the 1980s: Harnessing appropriate technologies and partnerships as a new procurement vernacular



HANNAH ROBERTSON

Introduction Homelands are remote Indigenous settlements located on traditional ancestral lands (or Country) in Australia. Homelands have historically lacked funding for building due to their remoteness and limited Government  support. Out of a necessity to connect with Country and despite this austerity, since the 1980s Indigenous Traditional-Owner groups have self-organized community-driven partnerships to continue building on their homelands. Through three case studies across the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land homelands, this chapter charts how a new community-driven building procurement vernacular has developed on the region’s homelands. The new vernacular is not defined by a particular building material system or typological configuration; however, the analysis identifies a common procurement process that harnesses appropriate technologies, local skills, external technical expertise and financial support partnerships to deliver a contextually responsive and distinct way of building. This new vernacular offers insight into sustainable homeland building practices and supports other Traditional Owner groups to live on Country.

Background context Prior to colonization, Indigenous peoples across Australia lived in small family clan groups on lands to which they were recognized as Traditional Owners. From the 1860s to the 1960s European colonization in Australia systematically dispossessed Indigenous peoples of traditional connections to their ancestral lands, or Country.1 Indigenous culture is predicated on a connection to Country; thus this dispossession threatened the continuation of culture and traditions. In Arnhem Land, a remote region in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia, dispossession of traditional lands occurred in the early twentieth century with the formation of Government and Christian mission settlements in centralized locations that either coerced or forced Indigenous peoples of multiple clans to live together. Missions operated with paternalistic regimes that limited Indigenous people’s freedom to earn equal wages, practise traditional customs, language or continue to connect with their traditional lands. By the 1960s, these restrictions combined with fears of further dispossession from non-Indigenous settlement and/or mining activities catalysed an era of Indigenous self-determination. Many Indigenous peoples throughout Arnhem Land and across Australia more broadly began to literally ‘walk back’ to their traditional homelands.2 This became known as the Homelands Movement. Homelands (also known as outstations and pastoral settlements in some places) are the smallest and most remote Indigenous settlements in Australia. They have populations of up to 200 people and typically

rely upon a larger population centre to access services and/or infrastructure.3 Unlike non-Indigenous settlements which are typically founded for economic purposes, Homelands are established for cultural purposes through traditional Indigenous clan associations to enable connections to Country.4 Arnhem Land is an extremely remote region spanning over 97,000 square kilometres in the northeast of the NT in Australia. It is a distinctly Indigenous region with about 87 per cent of the 15,200 inhabitants identifying as either Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.5 Arnhem Land has over 100 homelands across its lands, ranging from isolated family groups to networked hubs that link back to major townships or Aboriginal ex-mission or Government communities such as Maningrida in the west and Nhulunbuy or Yirrkala in the east. The region is extremely remote with a tropical climate characterized by hot temperatures year-round and two distinct seasons, the dry and the wet, the latter often causing homelands to be cut off by road for several months of the year. Since the inception of the Homelands Movement, there are several challenges which make building difficult on Arnhem Land’s homelands. These include: 1 Geographic remoteness with limited access to and from a homeland and limited availability of materials, services and equipment for building. 2 Limited availability of human resources for building arising from small population sizes. 3 Limited and/or unreliable availability of basic services (such as power and water) due to a historic absence or only basic provision of infrastructure and services. 4 High construction costs arising from the distance and difficulty of transportation to remote sites. 5 And perhaps most significantly, political settings that have contributed to a historical lack of Government funding support for building and services on homelands. To better understand the political settings that have limited building and service provision on homelands some further background is needed. At the outset of the Homelands Movement, construction on homelands preceded any accompanying financial or technical support from government and was thus entirely community-owned and built. Even once land rights were recognized under collective inalienable freehold titles under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT) (ALRA) [Cth, 1976], government policy for homelands provided only foundational support for basic and/or incremental services and building.6 The focus was on providing the absolute basics of water, clothing and food storage and ‘emergency’ shelter, with externally developed designs constructed largely by outsiders.7 This was despite communities and some authors of the time recognizing existing community resources and organizational practices that could be utilized in building design and procurement on homelands.8 In 1996, efforts to build on new homelands were further frustrated when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) declared a moratorium on the creation of new homeland settlements.9 Despite this overarching agenda there was some building support on existing homelands during this period. In 1998, ATSIC drafted the first and only national homelands policy which promoted individual or sub-­ regions of homelands to develop their own development plans so that when building funds were available, they could be allocated to meet locally identified needs.10 This policy was in unofficial effect until 2002 when ATSIC dissolved. During this time, homeland administrative organizations, often known as ‘Outstation Resource Agencies (ORA)’, were allocated funding and able to locally determine spending purposes; however, funding for building was typically ad hoc and without guaranteed support.11 Since 2007 ‘interventionist’ approaches that argue homelands are economically unsustainable and/ or unsafe have further compromised building funding and technical support.12 Interventionist approaches aim to centralize funding support to major townships, invariably ex-mission and government settlements,

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where it is argued services can be delivered more cost-effectively and there are perceived job opportunities. Indeed, the NT’s Homelands Policy (2009, amended 2015) only provides funding allowances for the maintenance of existing built infrastructure.13 Despite the austere policy settings limiting government support, non-government community-driven building partnerships have emerged in Arnhem Land that have provided the physical, financial and/or technical supports needed for building on homelands since the inception of the Homelands Movement. Since the inception of the Homelands Movement and particularly since the late 1980s, these challenges have necessitated innovative ways of building that have led to a new and regionally distinct Arnhem Land homeland vernacular architecture. Remarkably this has occurred despite homelands experiencing austere conditions imposed by their small scale, remoteness and limited to no government funding for essential services, community infrastructure and housing.14 It is arguable that these building approaches constitute a new vernacular of technological development and procurement partnership practices that has played a pivotal role in safeguarding and continuing Indigenous cultural traditions in the Arnhem Land region.

Introduction: A new procurement vernacular Vernacular architecture is often narrowly defined as the domestic and/or communal architectures associated with a traditional cultural group of a particular region. Since the publication of his book Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architectures of the World in 1997, architectural historian Paul Oliver’s criteria have often been used as the litmus test for determining whether an architecture is considered vernacular, or not. Oliver states that vernacular architecture needs to 1) relate to the environmental context, 2) use available resources, 3) be owner or community built and 4) utilize traditional technologies.15 More recently, vernacular architecture writings have critiqued this approach as setting up a dichotomous discourse that fixes cultures at a point in time by pitting ‘old against new’, ‘local versus external’, ‘crude versus sophisticated’ and so on.16 For instance, architectural anthropologist Marcel Vellinga argues that this approach does not take into account the ‘dynamic and fluid nature of culture, tradition, modernity’ and narrowly defines architecture ‘as a product rather than an evolving process’.17 Shifting the focus from product to process enables a useful vernacular architecture practice to be identified on Arnhem Land homelands. It is not a vernacular architecture that is visually discernible by a distinct building material system or typological configuration, but rather a process that has led to a distinct way of building on many homelands in the region. This process emphasizes community-driven partnerships to leverage available resources and appropriate technologies to address the challenges of remoteness and limitations of traditional technologies to meet contemporary needs. The resultant architecture ‘products’ are not likely to be revered in architecture design awards and yet they are simple, low cost, appropriate and environmentally and culturally responsive to the specific nature of Arnhem Land and homeland living. These architectures and way of building offer insight to a procurement practice that supports continued inhabitation of homelands and therefore the continuation of traditional cultural practices but also the continued development of local skills, resources and traditions of building that if supported would continue to contribute to an evolving and regionally distinct practice. To identify this new procurement vernacular, a selection of three community-led building case studies that have emerged on homelands across Arnhem Land since the late 1980s will be compared and contrasted. The first case study outlines a partnership between the Nawarddeken Traditional Owners and Warddeken Land Management to build ‘Balabbala’ structures at Kabulwarnamyo homeland that has seen evolutions in local timber, steel and trucker tarp building technology practices. This case is then contrasted with the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation’s mud-brick houses (1992–2006) designed by architect Simon Scally

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with Traditional Owners and built on homelands surrounding the Maningrida Indigenous community in West Arnhem Land. Finally, organized self-help approaches with technical partners are explained with the example of stone house construction by the Mt. Catt homeland community in partnership with architect Paul Haar (1986–8). The discussion will demonstrate that although Arnhem Land’s homeland building case studies largely adhere to Oliver’s vernacular architecture criteria, they share two critical differences: 1 Traditional technologies are used but this occurs in concert with modern technologies that are small scale and locally managed and maintained in the remote homeland context (also known as appropriate technologies). 2 Decision-making is community led and the buildings are community owned and/or built but the building process is supported by partnerships that provide additional technical, financial and/or physical resources to those available locally on the homeland. Despite this departure from Oliver’s widely accepted definition, the discussion will argue that these building partnerships constitute a regionally distinct new procurement vernacular in Arnhem Land. It will show that the building procurement partnerships make living on homelands possible within existing environmental and homeland settlement policy constraints (although the latter could be more supportive), support sustainable livelihoods and enable the continuation of traditional cultural practices in Arnhem Land. More broadly, these new procurement vernaculars offer insight into how we might support self-determined building on homelands in Arnhem Land, across Australia and in remote Indigenous lands across the Asia Pacific region.

Allowing for change To support more nuanced discussions of evolving vernacular architecture practice in line with Vellinga and others, a reframe of Oliver’s definitional criterion is needed that accommodates contemporary and evolving ways that local communities organize, identify available resources and use technologies for building. In the instance of building on Arnhem Land homelands, this requires recognizing that communities can retain decision-making agency and use of traditional knowledges in building, but that partnerships and appropriate technologies can enhance skills and provide additional resources to better meet contemporary living needs. Given the sheer remoteness and small populations of homelands there is typically limited locally available equipment and knowledge resources with which to build. Traditional technologies can be understood as the application of local scientific knowledges that exist within a particular context.18 In contrast, ‘appropriate technologies’ is a term coined by E.F Schumacher in his book Small Is Beautiful that describes the application of scientific knowledge systems that are small scale, affordable, decentralized, labour-­intensive, environmentally sustainable and locally autonomous.19 The term ‘traditional technologies’ is limited because it does not allow for the integration of external knowledge systems with those that locally exist in the community. For this reason, ‘appropriate technologies’ is a more useful lens for analysing building on homelands as it enables the inclusion of external technical, physical or financial supports that can enable local construction to occur and local repair and maintenance once built. There is a long history of developing and using appropriate technologies on Indigenous homelands across Australia. This is largely owing to the promotion of the concept through the work of the Indigenous owned and operated Centre for Appropriate Technology (CfAT), which has worked with homeland residents since the 1980s on practical building and infrastructure projects that support self-determination on homelands.20 CfAT projects are wide ranging but have included initiatives such as the installation of standalone

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solar systems in the ‘Bushlight’ project, remote telephone and satellite connections, safe water system installation and housing performance upgrades in the Sustainable Living Project. The use of appropriate technology is particularly important in Arnhem Land because if additional external equipment or knowledge systems are required once constructed, then the building system cannot be readily repaired or maintained by homeland residents without expensive imported external materials or skills. Similarly, partnerships play a crucial role in overcoming the challenges of limited government support for construction on homelands by leveraging access to resources. Depending on the partner organization’s capacity, capability and core function, the form of resource contributions may vary from access to technical expertise (such as design, construction skill and training), physical resources (such as access to equipment) and/or financial assistance. In all instances though the partnerships need to be genuinely community led with building priorities, designs and methods of construction led by the community to ensure the initiatives remain community owned. The case study analysis will show that harnessing both appropriate technologies and partnerships has allowed a new building vernacular to emerge on homelands.

Case study 1: A land management organization partnership at Kabulwarnamyo The first case study explores a partnership between the Nawarddeken Traditional Owners and Warddeken Land Management that has seen the construction of housing and community infrastructure at Kabulwarnamyo homeland since 2002. Kabulwarnamyo homeland (average population thirty) is in West Arnhem Land, NT. Officially it operates as a ranger base that is administered by an organization called Warddeken Land Management (WLM). Despite land management being the core business of the organization, Warddekken is owned by the Nawarddeken Traditional Owners. Thus, WLM acts as a representative organization that can use its corporation structure to leverage funds and organize support for building on the homeland in direct response to local community needs.21 The buildings constructed through the WLM partnership also exemplify the application and development of local appropriate technologies. Their structural and functional design is based on a Nawarddeken traditional shelter known as a Balabbala. As needs have evolved over time so too have the Balabbala technologies used, including the use of different materials (from timber to steel), systems of construction (on site to prefabricated and assembled) and functions (domestic to school and industrial functions). In 2002, Kabulwarnamyo was notably one of the last homeland settlements to be established at a time when almost no funding remained for the development of new homelands. By 2007, Warddeken had formed to support the Nawarddeken people’s aspirations to live on and manage country and to create livelihoods as rangers at Kabulwarnamyo.22 To support the ranger’s land management work they needed to live on their Country and housing, administrative and school buildings were needed. However, by this time neither the Australian nor the NT Government was actively investing in new buildings on homelands, thus alternative solutions were needed. Warddeken have incrementally built up the Kabulwarnamyo homeland by combining modest Government grants with payment for ecosystem services funds from their carbon abatement (fire management) work.23 By 2013, Warddeken had upgraded and/or constructed fourteen Balabbala and ancillary services such as showers and pit toilets to house the homeland community. To do this Warddeken combined A$80,000 Commonwealth Government Indigenous Land Corporation grant in combination with A$41,400 from payment for ecosystem services funds from the sale of carbon credits to multinational energy company Conoco Philips.24 As the carbon credits were owned by the Traditional Owners they could be flexibility used by Warddeken to build in direct response to community needs and the environmental context, rather than adhering to government determined regulations, which typically drive up building costs and limit the scope for local involvement.

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Balabbala are traditionally community built using local available resources and technologies. The Warddeken Rangers, who are Traditional Owners and residents of the outstation, self-built the office, fourteen Balabbala housing and two Balabbala school structures. In early iterations built through the partnership, local materials (including cedar posts and Stringybark floorboards) were used in combination with imported cost-effective and easily transportable materials (including trucking tarps, tents and cables) (Figure 7.1). A raised platform structure with a tensile gable roof was designed by Warddeken in partnership with Darwin-based architect Simon Scally. Each Balabbala consists of a raised timber platform floor on rails with local cypress pine posts and a trucking tarpaulin as a roof. Several subsequent versions have been developed over time including using two trucker tarps (with an air gap between to improve ventilation) instead of one and white trucker tarps instead of green (to reduce the passive solar heat gain), and the use of a steel substructure and ridge beams to increase the longevity of the structure. Although the increased use of steel moves away from the traditional vernacular of using exclusively local resources and building functions continue to diversify, the system continues to build upon the traditional technologies extant in community. Despite their basic structure, Balabbala are appropriate and responsive to the local environmental context. Dome or safari tents are pitched on the platforms to provide sleeping spaces and privacy for occupants. They have solar-powered electricity and hotplates for cooking that use bottled gas. A creek-fed pump provides water. A separate structure houses a shower and long-drop toilet. They provide rain and wind protection, a level of privacy between dwellings and are easy to maintain. There are long-term plans to

Fig. 7.1  An early version of the balabbala at Kabulwarnamyo. The double-layered tarpaulin shades provide crossflow ventilation and reduce passive heat gain. Photographer: Hannah Robertson, 2015.

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improve the Balabbala using locally sourced stone for half-walling. This will retain passive ventilation properties while improving protection during the wet season and cold weather. The structures can therefore be seen as staged appropriate technology projects, improved as further resources become available. Excluding wages for construction staff, each Balabbala housing structure cost A$15,000.25 These simple structures do not adhere to public housing standards, but do meet crucial local needs, involve local resources, technologies and people in the process and are appropriate to their environmental context. Balabbala have allowed Warddeken rangers to conduct Payment for Ecosystem Services activities and maintain cultural connections to Wardekken Country in the absence of government funding for building or services.26 The vernacular architecture of Warddeken is not fixed in time as the partnership continues to innovate in the development of Balabbala. In 2015, Warddeken self-built a school to enable children to also return to living on Country (Figure  7.2, top). The school is a modified and extended version of two Balabbala, built using WLM core funds. Most recently, in 2019, the Warddeken rangers built the latest Balabbala design iteration at a nearby Nawarddeken homeland/ranger base called Mamadawerre (Figure 7.2, lower left). Mamadawerre is a less established and more inaccessible homeland than Kabulwarnamyo, as such a design was needed that could be easily transported and quickly constructed by Warddeken rangers on site. Although the system uses an entirely steel frame, the architectural language of the earlier Balabbala is carried through, including the use of large eaves that provide privacy and shade from the east and west directions, a largely open interior (with the addition of external screen walls to provide security and water protection) and an open interior with no obstructing columns or walls (Figure 7.2, lower right).

Fig. 7.2  Top: The self-built independent school has been formally registered with the NT Department of Education. Lower left: the latest Balabbala design under construction at Mamadawerre. Lower right: the interior of the latest Balabbalad design at Mamadawerre. Photos: Warddeken Land Management, 2019.

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The diversity of building typologies and evolution of the Balabbala built by Warddeken rangers through the WLM partnership show a way of building that is deeply embedded in response to the specific needs and resources available at Kabulwarnamyo. The partnership has innovatively and sustainably reinvested payment for ecosystem services derived funds to meet the critical needs of the community. Balabbala are not the ideal solution for building development on homelands across Arnhem Land; a larger community would require greater privacy and security from its housing. But on Nawarddeken Country they are appropriate because they are simple and largely suited to the environment and the cost of building matches available funds. Former WLM CEO Shaun Ansell has said: ‘What we do at Kabulwarnamyo is appropriate for our resourcing, environment and capacity, but it’s not proper housing. If we had the capacity to build beautiful mud-brick houses (like Bawinanga) for everyone we would.’27

Case study 2: An outstation resource agency and philanthropic partnership on Maningrida Homelands Prior to the establishment of Kabulwarnamyo Homeland, many Nawarddeken Traditional Owners lived in the West Arnhem ex-mission Maningrida or its surrounding homelands, a sub-region of Arhnem Land with its own tradition of building. Like the Warddeken partnership at Kabulwarnamyo, the Traditional Owners of Maningrida’s surrounding homelands partnered with the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation (Bawinanga) to build on their homelands. From 1992 to 2006 the state subsidized, but community operated, Bawinanga provided finances, jobs, materials and technical support to support building mud-brick buildings on homelands.28 The mud-brick houses harnessed appropriate technology principles to optimize the use of abundant local materials such as earth in the mud-bricks, through hybrid applications with modern material components such as steel security screens. To further localize the construction process, appropriate technologies were used to optimize local labour participation in both construction and the manufacture of local materials such as mud-bricks and steel components. Ultimately however, the partnership was vulnerable to changes in internal management and government policy and the construction tradition on Maningrida homelands has now been scaled back. Bawinanga is a resource agency based in Maningrida that provides services to surrounding homelands. Its core function is economic development through job creation, local industrial development and/or land management, and only incidentally involves building. From 1992 to 2006, the flexibility of the federally funded Indigenous employment programme, Community Development and Employment Projects (CDEP) supported Bawinanga to self-determine the allocation of resources to best meet locally identified needs and create a regional network of decentralized micro enterprises. During this time Bawinanga created a local construction industry through a series of micro enterprises that used locally available resources and involved community labour, including a mud-brick factory and a steel works.29 To begin building on homelands, Bawinanga started by building modest shower and toilet blocks.30 The initiative grew to building entire houses using the locally produced mud-bricks and steel screens from these enterprises (Figure 7.3). By 2003, Bawinanga had built community buildings in Maningrida and over forty-five houses on surrounding homelands.31 In partnership with Darwin-based architect Simon Scally Bawinanga and community members designed the houses to incorporate local materials and be environmentally responsive.32 Although the houses included imported materials such as a concrete slab and a structural steel frame, locally produced mud-bricks and security screens made up the infill structure. In the living spaces the walls consisted of mud-bricks half walling, which reduced dust and vermin from getting into the house, while also allowing the upper half to remain

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Fig. 7.3  House at Djinkarr Outstation designed by Simon Scally of Build-up Designs and built by the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation. Photographer: Dean Yibarbuk, 2015.

open and promote passive ventilation. Likewise, the locally manufactured steel screens kept the building cool by promoting passive ventilation. As the factory and micro enterprises were situated in Maningrida, Indigenous Maningrida residents were involved in the manufacture process, while the Traditional Owner residents of each homeland were involved in construction. Because of cultural protocols in West Arnhem Land, homeland residents could not easily move between homelands to assist with building; therefore, this model provided the flexibility to provide building work on each homeland as it arose.33 The Bawinanga approach of working with local resident labour at each homeland was also adopted with success to upgrade homeland housing in East Arnhem Land during the Laynhapuy Homelands Aboriginal Corporation and CfAT’s Sustainable Living Project.34 Although the Bawinanga approach generated employment opportunities on homelands, the potential local labour input was limited by the specialized skills required for mud-brick laying and the scale of building of one or two houses in each homeland did not provide sufficient opportunity for local skill development.35 Unfortunately, since the early 2000s few new mud-brick buildings were built in Maningrida and the surrounding homelands. This occurred largely due to the cessation of CDEP which reduced the flexibility to locally determine funding priorities which in turn affected the sustainability of the micro enterprises and industries. This was compounded by a change in Bawinanga’s management which led to financial administration as well as greater enforcement of public housing regulatory controls on homelands, which impacted the ability to certify the locally produced mud-bricks. More recently in 2017, Bawinanga gained Australian Standard certification of its mud-bricks and opened a new mud-brick factory, which holds promise for continuing the vernacular architecture tradition of building with mud-bricks in the region.36

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Community-driven partnerships and the community corporation example of Warddeken and Bawinanga characteristically share support for local autonomy in decision-making. Although community corporations usually have some government funding support with accompanying restrictions on spending, these examples show that when there is flexibility to self-determine spending, community organizations can redirect funds to address local building needs. This in turn supports the core activities for which the funding was originally provided, such as job creation and land management. Warddeken and Bawinanga also share use of appropriate technologies that draw upon local materials and develop local skills in construction. Although technical construction support is more limited in the Warddeken in comparison to Bawinanga, this was mitigated with a simple design. Warddeken’s simple designs also supported a highly community-driven process throughout. The Bawinanga and Warddeken alternatives show that vastly different visual vernaculars can emerge within one region depending on the type of technical support they receive; however, they share a similar emphasis on appropriate technologies and leveraging building development through organizational partnerships.

Case study 3: An organized self-help partnership at Mount Catt In contrast to community-driven partnerships with community corporations, the most self-reliant homeland building initiatives in Arnhem Land are self-help constructions. Self-help or self-reliant construction has occurred on homelands across Australia without external funding, partner organizations or architects and is a tradition that well documented in a CfAT report by Sonja Peter and Javier Aroya.37 Historically, Aboriginal people built their own shelters at a family and clan-based level from local materials. During the assimilation era, the introduction of social housing began to erode self-building traditions. However, because of a lack of funds self-building perpetuated in many remote parts of northern Australia and particularly on homelands. Although these structures exemplify the use of appropriate technologies, they differ from the vernacular case study examples of West Arnhem Land in that they have had limited access to further financial, technical or material resources outside of the homeland to be able to meet contemporary needs for more solid permanent housing that retains environmental and cultural considerations.38 One exception is the organized self-help partnership between the Mount Catt homeland community (1984–6) in central Arnhem Land and architect Paul Haar.39 Organized self-help is a building procurement methodology that Richard Margolis of the (now defunct) International Self-Help Housing Associates (ISHA) defined as ‘an outside agency supplies money, credit, technical skills and an organising hand, while the families themselves build the houses and help to shape the program’s policies’.40 While Haar acts as the partner in this case, the very high level of family involvement required differentiates this process from the Warddeken and Bawinanga examples. Haar lived and worked alongside the Mount Catt community in central Arnhem Land throughout the partnership and adopted both participatory design and construction processes, such as model making ‘[where participants] explored, designed and built what was meaningful to them’.41 Haar saw his role as one of facilitation to encourage appreciations of scale and ask questions.42 Participatory building techniques aimed to draw upon ‘intimate understanding[s] of the land and its features’ such as ‘knowledge of timber pole construction developed from background[s] as cattlemen’.43 Participatory processes provided opportunities to identify local needs and the use of locally available resources and skills was replicable and maintainable on future projects. Haar’s projects received only modest state capital support, thus necessitating use of free locally available materials.44 In Mount Catt the most abundant materials are stone and termite-resistant Coolabah timbers. With Traditional Owner’s input, Haar designed a timber-framed house with stone infill walls. The system

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Fig. 7.4  Self-building at Mt. Catt, Arnhem Land. Source: Paul Haar, 1984.

used appropriate technologies, such as the cattlemen skillset of the Mount Catt people in tying the timbers (Figure  7.4). By self-building the structures Traditional Owners gained construction skills and the  use of locally available stone and timber made the buildings easy to repair and maintain on Country. These houses remain standing today and continue to inspire other vernacular traditions in Arnhem Land such as Nawarddeken at Kabulwarnamyo in their desire to add stone half walling to existing Balabbala. Using exclusively local available materials on a meagre budget had accompanying challenges, including a lack of necessary equipment (such as a tractor for shifting timber), a reduced level of finish and difficult workability for semi-skilled family members. Haar critically reflects that the limitations of the approach were an over reliance on his supervision, a lack of access to funds which meant overly laborious manual work, and some political divisions caused between families involved in house building and others.45 The participatory design and construction process of organized self-help aligns with other ­community-driven approaches with a focus on the local environmental and social context as an autonomous and decentralized setting to derive solutions using the resources and skills available. Like the Warddeken and  Bawinanga approaches, at Mount Catt the community took on an active role throughout the entire building design and development process. In contrast to Warddeken and Bawinanga, the highly personal relationship of the architect/mentor and the community emphasized one person as critical to success. Fundamentally, organized self-help is also reliant on external support, Haar was able to use allocated government funds more autonomously than Warddeken, but meagre support limited choice to

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completely decentralized technologies with local materials and voluntary local labour, that made construction difficult and is perhaps why the tradition of building stone houses has not persisted at Mount Catt in recent years.

Lessons: Harnessing partnerships and appropriate tech discussion On homelands in Arnhem Land, community-led building partnerships have contributed to enabling Traditional Owners to reconnect with and live on Country. These initiatives emerged as a way of dealing with scarce government funding and an overriding desire to maintain traditional connections to Country. The initiatives show that even with limited state support, alternative building approaches are still possible and that these can contribute to a new vernacular. Visually the threads between Arnhem Land’s new homeland building vernacular are not immediately apparent. It is not a vernacular characterized by a single material system or formal organization, but when viewed as a system of procurement processes and forms of organization a common set of principles emerge. This is a vernacular characterized by a considered response to the tropical environmental context. The buildings are humble, but carefully situated in terms of their orientation, shading and connection to the ground to optimize passive cooling and ventilation. They create designated spaces from private internal to shaded external areas that help to zone activities and optimize the use of small space. In all instances, except for Mount Catt, the types of buildings constructed evolved in response to local needs to include housing, amenity and community functions as the partnerships lasted over several years. For instance, the Warddeken Balabbala use an open system that easily allows for local adaptation (such as adding stone half walling) and continual development with the changing needs of a community. A sticking point with Oliver’s definition of vernacular architecture arises when the examples are tested against the requirement of using only locally available resources. If Oliver’s vernacular architecture definition is strictly adhered to in terms of construction materials, the Mount Catt stone houses are the only example that qualify as exclusively using local materials. The Warddeken and Bawinanga cases use a combination of imported steel and locally available timber and mud respectively. Arguably a more process-driven approach in line with Vellinga’s definition is needed that also accounts for the extent local human, technological and financial resources are used and developed. To varying degrees all cases involve community input during the building process. This enables the transfer of skills to homeland residents, which supports maintenance and repair of the structures using the homeland’s local resources. The examples outlined are all cost-effective and fit within the limited available financial resources of the homelands. This also supports a continuation of the approaches and the adoption of similar systems in subsequent building approaches, which establishes and perpetuates a vernacular tradition. Across the initiatives, access to financial resources has the greatest impact on the independence and sustainability of the initiative. For instance, Warddeken is government funded for its land management activities not building, thus reducing the ability to redirect funds, whereas Haar’s organized self-help projects attracted minimal government funds but with great use flexibility. Each partnership case actively included Traditional-Owners in design and construction; however, all rely on external resources from an external partner or community corporation, whether it is technical, physical and/or capital. The Bawinanga approach is the only example of a locally networked approach, which enabled multiple opportunities for community building across a region, initially through the manufacture of mud-bricks and steel screens by community members in Maningrida and then by homeland residents during construction. The opportunity for homeland resident input was limited to some extent

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because the mud-brick laying and steel framing required some specialized labour, which was not generally done by homeland residents, thus limiting the transfer of skills. In both the Warddeken and Mount Catt examples community input to building was a necessity and therefore integral throughout both approaches, but technical support from the Warddeken Aboriginal Corporation and Paul Haar remained critical for the implementation of these projects. Of these two Warddeken is arguably the more successful alternative as the continued technical support from the community corporation allowed for skills to develop over time through multiple construction iterations and become embedded in the community. Similarly, Oliver’s definition of vernacular architecture is challenged when the examples are assessed against the traditional technology criterion. The only structure that built upon the traditional structural system and form of precolonial traditional Indigenous architecture are the Balabbala structures, but even this system evolved to be built using steel instead of timber. It is possible to argue that a more valuable approach is to assess whether the initiative developed an appropriate technological tradition as part of the collaboration and construction process. For instance, at Mount Catt, local skills gained as cattlemen in tying timber fencing were drawn upon and adapted to assist with fixing the timber structure of the timber in place. Likewise, the Bawinanga approach developed an appropriate technology of building with mud-bricks for all local building types, even though this had not traditionally been a method of construction. The Warddeken example perhaps best encapsulates how an appropriate technology can emerge through an ongoing partnership, because the system remains community built, maintained and repaired but rather than being fixed the system is able to evolve with the changing needs and growing skills of the community. Considering this analysis, it can be argued that the community-driven building partnerships on Arnhem Land homelands constitute a new vernacular that has emerged due to conditions of austerity. Although there is no single visual or typological vernacular for the region, the initiatives highlight that through partnerships and appropriate technologies there is a diversity of ways to build that are appropriate to their environmental context and support the inclusion of local people.

Supporting the new vernacular The new vernacular of community-driven building partnerships on Arnhem Land’s homelands shows that building is possible if people continue to want to live on homelands, irrespective of limited support from Government. Even within current levels of homelands funding, there are several measures that could be taken to support the continuation of this new vernacular in Arnhem Land and the formation of other homeland vernaculars across Australia. From a policy perspective, community-driven homeland building partnerships could be enabled and supported by implementing government policies that recognize, or at least do not inhibit, self-driven building initiatives. This could be supported by measures such as promoting ‘alternative solutions’ that enhance the use of regional resources (materials and labour) but are ‘deemedto-satisfy’ regulatory performance requirements of the Australian Standards and Building Code of Australia. Where possible the specification of regionally sourced, manufactured and/or produced materials should be prioritized. Promoting the use of regionally sourced materials delivers social return on investment benefits across the life of a project, including keeping funds in the region and ongoing production, maintenance and upgrade activities across a building’s service life. Using available resources on the homeland in the structural system also reduces the cost and environmental impact of material transportation and labour accommodation. One of the challenges of using regionally sourced materials in homeland building is the

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paucity and often absence of an existing local materials industry. The long distances to markets, lack of economies of scale and poor existing infrastructure all act as deterrents for local materials industries to form on homelands; however, homelands typically operate within a regional network and as the example at Bawinanga highlights, this requirement would help to strengthen these connections. In line with the recently published Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research, homeland communities should drive the design, construction and maintenance of buildings on their homelands. Where needed, partnerships can support self-determined aspirations, preferably with a long-term commitment to the community to ensure the time needed to embed the building practices as a vernacular to that place. Opportunities for owner or community input (either on the homeland or from the surrounding region) can be optimized in construction by designing structural systems with ‘whole of life’ consideration that draw upon existing skills and gradually build new ones to support local maintenance and future building opportunities. Given the abundance of labour available on homelands, where possible a semi-skilled labour-intensive process should be favoured over a specialized and/or technologically intensive approach. Local building input also delivers other benefits such as a greater sense of ownership and more responsive design outcomes. To promote best practice in homeland building and design the Centre for Appropriate Technology has developed a much-needed ‘Technology on Country (ToC) Hub’.46 The ToC Hub aims to provide appropriate technologies technical support to homelands, assist in brokering partnerships and establish an online database that enables homeland groups to share technical knowledge, resources and expertise easily and reciprocally with other Traditional Owner groups. This database could be enhanced with funding support. It could also learn from past initiatives such as the Aboriginal Housing Panel (AHP) (later known as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Panel), which from 1972 to 1978 operated through the Royal Australian Institute of Architects with Australian Government funding. The purpose of the panel was to research, consult and advise on architecture, infrastructure and anthropological projects in Aboriginal communities (including homelands). Membership of the panel included architects, policymakers and members of Aboriginal organizations but a Homelands Hub (with funding) would best be facilitated by the Centre for Appropriate Technology and membership could extend to Traditional Owner Groups and their partners.47

Conclusion The analysis shows that community-driven building initiatives on Arnhem Land’s homelands deviate from Oliver’s traditionally accepted definition of vernacular architecture by combining both local and externally available materials, technologies and forms of support. Rather than undermine the vernacular architecture legitimacy of these initiatives, appropriate technologies and partnerships help strengthen the ability to respond to the specific regional needs of homelands. The sensitive and appropriate use of appropriate contemporary technologies in concert with traditional practices allows the buildings to adapt with the evolving needs of a homeland, such as different building typologies and improved performance outcomes. Likewise, the collective agency of homeland resident communities in partnership with the technical expertise of external partner professionals and/or community organizations helps to embed these practices in the community and ensure they continue to be practised and to evolve on the homelands with the communities that live there. With no secure strategy from government for continuing to support building on homelands, this new vernacular provides an alternative approach that delivers appropriate and sustainable built outcomes on Arnhem Land’s homelands, with valuable lessons for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples on Country across Australia.

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Notes 1. Andrew Macmillan, An Intruder’s Guide to East Arnhem Land, 2nd Edition (Nightcliff: Niblock Publishing Original edition, 2001. Reprint, 2007); Helen Ross, Just for Living: Aboriginal Perceptions of Housing in Northwest Australia (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1987). 2. Djambawa Marawili, interview with Hannah Robertson, Baniyala, Northern Territory, 14 April 2015. 3. Paul Memmott and Mark Moran, ‘Indigenous Settlements of Australia’, in Australia: State of the Environment Second Technical Paper Series (Human Settlements), Series 2 (Brisbane: Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2001). 4. Helen Hughes, Lands of Shame: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ‘Homelands’ in Transition (St Leonards: Centre for Independent Studies, 2007); Memmott and Moran, ‘Indigenous Settlements’; John Taylor, ‘Social Engineering and Indigenous Settlement: Policy and Demography in Remote Australia’, in Australian Aboriginal Studies (1):12 (Canberra: Centre for Aboriginal Economic and Policy Research, 2009), 4–15. 5. ‘Local Government Areas: East Arnhem’, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Canberra: Australian Government, 2016, accessed 10 October 2022, https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/­getproduct/ census/2016/quickstat/LGA71300 ‘Local Government Areas: WestArnhem’, ABS, Canberra: Australian Government, 2016, accessed 8 October 2022, https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/ getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/LGA74660. 6. The ALRA Act is applicable in the Northern Territory only. See Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Australia). (1976). Recognition of traditional land rights for the rest of Australia did not come into effect until 1997 with the Native Title Act (Commonwealth, 1993); Moran and Burgen, ‘Homeland Plan’, 128. 7. Coombs, Brandl and Snowdon, ‘A Certain Heritage’, xxxiv; Michael Heppell, A Black Reality: Aboriginal Camps and Housing in Remote Australia (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1979). 8. Coombs, Brandl and Snowdon, ‘A Certain Heritage’; Heppell, A Black Reality; J.P.M Long, Aboriginal settlements; a survey of institutional communities in eastern Australia (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1970); Joseph P. Reser, ‘A Matter of Control: Aboriginal Housing Circumstances in Remote Communities and Settlements’, in A Black Reality: Aboriginal Camps and Housing in Remote Australia, ed. Michael Heppell, Series no. 6 (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1979), 65–96. 9. ATSIC, ‘ATSIC Policy of Outstations, Homelands and New and Emerging Communities.’ 10. Ibid. 11. Commonwealth Government of Australia, National Homelands Policy, ed. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (Canberra: Australian Government, 1998); Moran and Burgen, ‘Homeland Plan’, 53. 12. Interventionist approaches were developed by Government, initially in reaction to the 2007 release of the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ Report, which cited high levels of child sexual abuse in remote homeland communities. (Rex Wild and Patricia Anderson, ‘Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle “Little Children Are Sacred”, Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse’ (Darwin: Northern Territory Government, 2007); Commonwealth Government of Australia, Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act (Canberra: Housing Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, 2007); Commonwealth Government of Australia, Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Act (Canberra: Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2012); Commonwealth Government of Australia, Municipal and Essential Services Implementation Plan: National Partnership Agreement on Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory (Canberra: Housing Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, 2013); Hughes, Lands of Shame; Peter Sutton, The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia at the End of the Liberal Consensus (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2009).

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13. NT Government, Homelands Policy. Sean Kerins, ‘The First-Ever Northern Territory Homelands/Outstations Policy’, 1–8. 14. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). ‘ATSIC policy for outstations, homelands and new and emerging communities.’ Edited by ATSIC Housing Infrastructure Health and Heritage Branch. Canberra: Commonwealth Government of Australia, 1998; Sean Kerins, ‘The First-Ever Northern Territory Homelands/ Outstations Policy’, in CAEPR Topical Issue (Canberra: Centre for Aboriginal and Economic Policy Research, 2009), 1–8; Frances Morphy, ‘Redefining Viability: Aboriginal Homelands Communities in North-east Arnhem Land’, Australian Journal of Social Issues 43, no. 3 (Spring, 2008): 381–96; Regional Services Reform Unit. ‘Resilient Families, Strong Communities: A Roadmap for Regional and Remote Aboriginal Communities’ (Perth: Government of Western Australia, 2016), 16–17; Department of Housing and Community Development, ‘Homelands Policy’ (Darwin: Northern Territory Government, 2009; 2015). 15. Paul Oliver (ed.), Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World. Vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 16. Marcel Vellinga, ‘Living Architecture: Re-imagining Vernacularity in Southeast Asia and Oceania’, Fabrications 30, no. 1 (2020): 11–24. 17. Vellinga, ‘Living Architecture’, 16. 18. Klaus Zwerger, ‘Vernacular Architecture: A Term Denoting and Transporting Diverse Content’, Built Heritage 3, (2019): 14–25. 19. E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). 20. Alan Mayne, Alternative Interventions: Aboriginal Homelands, Outback Australia and the Centre for Appropriate Technology (Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press, 2014). 21. David Leece, ‘Kabulwarnamyo Outstation: Site Infrastructure Plan’, in Billard Leece Partnership for Warddeken Land Management (Melbourne: Unpublished, 2013), 1–27. 22. Peter Cooke and Georgia Vallance, Warddeken Land Management Limited Annual Report: 2009–2010 (Kabulwarnamyo: Warddeken Land Management, 2011). 23. Shaun Ansell. (CEO Warddeken Land Management) Interview with Hannah Robertson, Darwin, Northern Territory, 5 May 2015. 24. Peter Cooke, ‘Report to ILC Regarding Benefits from Funding Provided under Contract 346’ (Kabulwarnamyo, Warddeken Land Management (Unpublished), 2013). 25. Shaun Ansell. Interview. 26. Robertson, Hannah, ‘Caring for Country: How Remote Communities Are Building on Payment for Ecosystem Services’, The Conversation, 18 June 2019. 27. Shaun Ansell. Interview. 28. J.C. Altman, ‘What Future for Remote Indigenous Australia? Economic Hybridity and the Neoliberal Turn’, Imagining Futures (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010), 259–80; Simon Scally, ‘Outstation Design – Lessons from Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation in Arnhem Land’, in Take 2: Housing Design in Indigenous Australia (Brisbane: The Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2003), 84–9. 29. Ian Munro. (Ex-CEO Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation.) Interview with Hannah Robertson, Maningrida, West Arnhem Land, 12 May 2015. 30. Simon Scally (Architect and Director Build Up Design), interview with Hannah Robertson, Darwin, Northern Territory, 5 May 2015. 31. Simon Scally. Interview. 32. Simon Scally, ‘Outstation Design – Lessons from Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation in Arnhem Land’, in Take 2: Housing Design in Indigenous Australia (Brisbane: The Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2003), 85.

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33. Simon Scally, ‘Outstation Design’, 85. 34. Brendan Moore, interview with Hannah Robertson, Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, 20 April 2015; Harriet Stone, interview with Hannah Robertson, Melbourne, Australia, 2 June 2015. 35. Jake Weigl, interview with Hannah Robertson, Kabulwarnamyo, Northern Territory, 3 May 2015. 36. Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation, ‘B.A.C. News’, February-March (Winnelie, NT: BAC, 2017) https://www. bawinanga.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/BAC-Newsletter-Issue-Three-Feb-March-2017.pdf. 37. Sonja Peter and Javier Ayora, Self-Build: Alternative Housing Procurement in Remote Indigenous Communities (Alice Springs: Indigenous Centre for Appropriate Technology, August 2011). 38. Paul Haar, ‘Community Building and Housing Process: Context for Self-Help Housing’, in Take 2 – Housing Design in Indigenous Australia, ed. Paul Memmott (Brisbane: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 2003), 94. 39. In his work with: Lake Tyers, Victoria (1983); Mt. Catt Homeland, NT (1984–5); St. Paul’s Village, Torres Strait (1986–1988) and Palm Island; Queensland (1991–2); Paul Haar, 1992. ‘Housing in the Torres Strait Region: Towards a Self-Help Approach’ (Canberra: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, 1992); Paul Haar, ‘A Self-Help Approach to Remote Area Housing – St. Paul’s Village, Moa Island, Far North Queensland’, Chapter 17 in Settlement – A History of Australian Indigenous Housing, ed. P. Read (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2000), Haar, ‘Community Building’, 90–7. 40. Richard Margolis, Something to Build On (Washington: International Self-Help Housing Associates, 1967), 14. 41. Haar, ‘Community Building’, 94. 42. Haar, ‘A Self-Help Approach’, 46. 43. Haar, ‘Community Building’, 92. 44. For instance, at Moa Island A$48,000 per family for materials, with A$27,000 Government input, while in comparison a similarly sized four-bedroom cement sheet kit home built with external labour cost A$269,000 (at 2003), (Haar, ‘Community Building’, 95). 45. Haar, ‘Community Building’, 95. 46. ‘Technology on Country’, The Centre for Appropriate Technology, accessed 1 February 2023, https://cfat.org. au/toc. 47. Michael Heppell, A Black Reality; Fabian Hutchinson, Aboriginal Housing Panel (1972–1978): ‘Archives (MS 3254)’, AIATSIS, accessed 15 November 2020, http://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/ MS3254_partA.PDF.

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8

The resurgence of Indigenous knowledge in adapting vernaculars: Implications of climate change for Rimajol architectural traditions



JAMES MILLER

Introduction This chapter posits that the decolonization of climate change adaptation strategies can lead to a Rimajol (people of the Marshall Islands) design approach for a more culturally rich and climate-sensitive built environment. In this chapter, I will outline the methods by which in situ adaptation is currently taking place, how the utilization of Indigenous design knowledge may assist in climate change adaptation and resilience and how migration is currently proceeding. The vernacular architecture of Aelon Kein Ad (The Republic of the Marshall Islands [RMI]), like the architectural traditions of other atoll peoples, was closely in tune with the environmental setting, having to respond to the ocean and the land. Materials, methods and meanings embedded ecological knowledge within a deep understanding of place; this knowledge was passed across generations. Through a relationship of reciprocity with the environment, Rimajol protected areas of the land to ensure their survival – consolidating settlement to more dense villages along the lagoon. The architecture itself was constructed of renewable resources embedded within everyday practices of weaving pandanus and manufacturing cordage. Construction was a communal process, bringing together the whole village for the benefit of the family. These practices exemplified Rimajol concepts such as: jemjem maal (sharpening the steel together), kumit (commit together), Juon ainbat, Juon baamle (help one help all) or jake jobol eo (each one reaches one). Natural hazards were at the core of the culture-environment relationship; thus, these architectural systems were inherently resilient and responsive to climatic events. In engaging the work of the existing national adaptation framework, Reimaanlok (‘Our way forward’), leveraging Indigenous knowledge within the design and development of the RMI will likely have a positive outcome.1 Foreign aid and development strategies must put Rimajol first and allow local ownership of projects. Perhaps the traditional spatial practices and vernacular architecture of Aelon̄ Kein Ad could become a model for both responding culturally and climatically. As the vernacular architecture discourse broadens through decolonization, it is critical to ask, Whose narrative is being presented? It is necessary as designers and scholars that we become critically aware of the ways knowledge is privileged. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith states: There is also, amongst Indigenous academics, the sneaking suspicion that the fashion of post-colonialism has become a strategy for reinscribing or reauthorizing the privileges of non-Indigenous academics because the field of post-colonial discourse has been defined in ways which can still leave out Indigenous peoples, our ways of knowing, and our current concerns.2

‘Nothing about us without us’ has become a rallying call among Indigenous peoples seeking restitution for their intellectual property; what is now standard in research ethics must become standard ethics of practice.

Historical context(s) Over the past 150 years, the built environment of the RMI has undergone a massive transformation due to the influence of colonization; their experience has been similar to their Oceanic cousins like Guam and Hawai’i. Throughout this period, foreign architectures have been introduced and influenced Rimajol architectural traditions. The imported architectural systems reproduce largely Euro-American spatial practices and influence the lifestyles of an Indigenous population. The Indigenous population adapts to these architectural forms and foreign built-environments to create socio-culturally supportive spaces, utilizing Indigenous knowledge. However, these imported and maladapted architectural and planning systems are vulnerable to climate change impacts. The continuation of development programmes within climate change adaptation strategies brings to question the ability of imported systems to mitigate risk and increase resilience. Rimajol knowledge systems are responding in two directions: the current adaptation to the built environment in Aelon̄ Kein Ad, and the forming of Rimajol settlements in the United States. With the continued influence of international development programmes that perpetuate Western technocratic systems in climate change adaptation and resilience projects, the question remains: How will Indigenous communities leverage their Indigenous knowledge systems to create resilient futures reflective of their Indigenous ontologies? The decolonization of climate change adaptation strategies can lead to an approach centred in Indigenous epistemologies for a more culturally rich and climate-sensitive built environment. When an anti-colonial framework is applied to analyse the built environment of Aelon̄ Kein Ad, it becomes apparent that Indigenous architecture and planning intelligence provide a path forward for more resilient architectural futures.3

Climate change as a driver of resurgence The projected impact of global climate change on community resilience places coastal populations in a precarious position. As sea-level rise and sea surface temperatures change, there will be an increase in tropical storm frequency and intensity, which will significantly affect the ability of coastal zones to protect themselves from storm surges.4 The increase in storm surges and sea inundation exacerbated by existing Anthropocene environmental degradation create a poor outlook for many communities in Oceania, decreasing habitability.5 Climate change is creating a particular urgency to find solutions for mitigating vulnerability and build community resilience. As communities adapt to the impacts of climate change, the capacity of local knowledge is challenged. The concept of braiding together knowledge systems (e.g. Indigenous and scientific) to strengthen adaptive capacity holds promise, such as the ideas introduced by Robin Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass.6 As adaptation in the RMI follows two different tracks: responses in situ and responses across migration routes, how might braiding knowledge systems strengthen communities? While adaptation responses are coupled with growing narratives of climate-forced displacement, Kench et al. echo the need to focus on robust strategies for small island nations to produce locally, sustainable adaptive planning strategies.7 Current calls from various officials of low-lying atoll nations counter talks of migration and resettlement that were popular in previous administrations. Kench et al. also point out the issue of in-place solutions which seek to develop rigid solutions that fight sea-level rise through land reclamation and seawalls; these strategies reinforce maladapted practices. Three possible adaptation strategies for Aelon̄ Kein Ad include: defend the line through engineered solutions, migrate or adapt to the system of atoll geomorphology. Unfortunately, the colonial imprint of planning and architectural traditions, land tenure systems and governance restrict the possibility of novel adaptation strategies that would allow for inter-­ atoll migration rather than emigration. As of 2022, the government of the RMI was working with the World

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Bank on urban resilience planning, which included land reclamation and seawall construction among other strategies.8 Historically, a resilience mechanism to climatic events for traditional small island populations was a temporary migration to nearby islands where family ties were held. Resilience mechanisms in this sense represent systems of Indigenous knowledge established through the intricate connections of humans and environments. Communities established social networks of kin-based relations to establish these mechanisms within socio-cultural structures. Inter-atoll migration was a traditional system of resilience when faced with drought or tropical storms.9 Migration becomes a natural adaptive response. Forced displacement and relocation are a likely future that many communities face in Aelon̄ Kein Ad and elsewhere. In situ adaptation and migration need to be both considered when adaptive strategies reflect the existing trends of population flows, such as the case for the RMI. While statements for and against migration or in-place reinforcement of urbanized areas are present, it is not clear if they represent community-based consent or political strategy. Reinforcing settlement in-place through geo-engineering meets geo-political demands for economic viability, clouded by political power and neocolonial influence through development. These perspectives reinforce a Western perspective of permanence. However, in an Indigenous, land-based paradigm, space is not static but rather relational.10 Indigenous spatial relations allow for the movement of people in response to the ecosystem, such as in the case presented by Kench, Ford and Owen. I-Kiribati, Rimajol and Tuvaluan representatives have spoken against migration, but this discourse is framed within the geopolitical ramifications of a Western paradigm. These are conversations and statements being made within countries influenced heavily by the interests of their former (or current) colonizers. Opening a paradigmatic shift in the borderlands of thought might allow for more fruitful discussions around migration as adaptation and Indigenizing spatial relationships within Oceania and across boundaries into the United States, Australia and New Zealand. If migration is happening, processes of Rimajol settlement in the United States should be considered within the broader framework of adaptation strategies and thus an extension of evolving Rimajol vernaculars. In understanding how Indigenous Knowledge responds to change throughout the evolution of the Rimajol culture, and in the production of culturally supportive space, one can better understand how similar structural mechanisms may assist communities in both resettlement and present-day adaptation strategies.

Methodology Data collected under a multi-sited case study across rural, semi-rural and urban communities in Aelon Kein that was conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation, ‘The Continuity of Deep Cultural Patterns,’ was analysed to examine the implications of foreign influence on adaptive capacities for Rimajol communities.11 Data collected from oral histories recorded between 2015 and 2017 was combined with participatory mapping conducted during the same time period with multiple generations present; together these resources provided depth in understanding localized change in three sites (Laura, Majuro Atoll; Djarrit and Uliga, Majuro Atoll; and Namdrik Atoll) from the period of Japanese occupation up until 2017. Additionally, follow-up interviews with five previous research participants and three further interviews with community members across the three sites provided more in-depth understanding of local adaptation strategies. Lastly, news articles from the Marshall Islands Journal were examined for discourse surrounding climate change adaptation and architectural development projects between 2013 and 2021. Significant cultural patterns that reflect Indigenous knowledge systems, as published in ‘The Evolution of the Marshallese Vernacular House’ are referenced.12 As in the previous publication, the land system known as the weto is central to the analysis in this chapter, emphasizing the concept that dwelling is a land-based practice.13 These

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methods provide insight into adaptative strategies in the Rimajol built environment. Colonial apparatuses are criticized for their impact on Rimajol architectures and future resilience, emphasizing how Indigenous knowledge overcomes weaknesses present in the policies of foreign influence.

Climate change adaptation – In situ The colonial transformation of land use and architectural traditions in Aelon Kein Ad produced built environments unsuitable for the specificities of place (climate, hydrology, culture, etc.), creating social and environmental vulnerability. In Aelon Kein Ad, habitation was a traditional system that happened through a deep connection to the land and water. This relationship has been transformed by generations of colonial influence. Prior to colonization, it is apparent that traditional settlement patterns correlated to vulnerability reduction strategies during tropical storms, and housing responded to the climatic variables at the time.14 However, the influence of foreign architectural and planning traditions supplanted that of Rimajol. As my previous work on deep-cultural patterns in Aelon Kein Ad demonstrates, the cultural patterns located within Indigenous Knowledge reproduce Rimajol space within colonial architectures imported from the United States.15 The urban centre of Majuro, Djarrit-Uliga-Delap (the DUD) is a remnant of American planning and architectural traditions of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (1947–86) and the Compact of Free Association (1986–present) periods, that have been reinforced in the vernacular of Rimajol built-environment over the past seventy years.16 Spennemann’s planning critique speaks to the intrinsic environmental vulnerability of the DUD’s urban development patterns.17 Kench and Ford further illustrate the significant role that island geomorphological dynamics play in past, present and future land use planning.18 The current government of RMI has been preparing to implement engineered solutions for protecting the existing urban area of Majuro, namely land reclamation and seawalls.19 This strategy counters Kench and Ford’s recommendations for a soft approach to land-use adaptation. While seawalls and land reclamation might provide temporary relief from sea-level rise and inundation events, these strategies will not protect urbanized populations from a catastrophic tropical storm, such as the one that washed parts of the DUD into the lagoon at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is possible to rebuild with rigid structures that provide protection, but to what extent is the long-term habitability addressed? Geest et al. question the viability of an urban centre in Majuro, devoid of local resources; they see the climatic stressors on ecosystems, livelihoods and habitability that are driving outward migration in Aelon Kein Ad.20 The impact of inundation events like those in 2014 has reduced shoreline protections, such as tree lines and berms – traditional strategies to protect inland agroforestry and dwellings from flooding and salt-spray. The Rimajol concept pedped ijin pedped ijon helps demonstrate the significance of this zone between the reef flat and high-tide waterline. Just as the reef protects the land from the ocean swells, strong foundations embedded in the earth protect the community. The Reimaanlok Plan has been implemented to respond to the environmental aspects of adaptation embedded within a Rimajol epistemology.21 However, as of 2022, this framework had not yet been applied to the built environment within the national adaptation strategies. Previous programmes to address this gap have been the ‘Homeowners Handbook’ for self-help adaptation techniques, and ‘A landowners guide to coastal protection’ developed by Murray Ford.22 A recent UNDP-funded project assessed land-use practices on Laura in conjunction with the RMI ‘Ridge to Reef’ Programme. Based on preliminary briefs, the project primarily focuses on water infrastructure, but not housing and planning adaptation. As families try to adapt to changing shorelines, ecosystem services such as food, water, fuelwood and protection are changing. In Namdrik, these changes have been evident in landform adaptation strategies apparent on a few wetos. The 2014 king tides affected livelihood perceptions. Namdrik lost all taro pit farms

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due to sea inundation, breadfruit trees were lost due to intrusion of underground saltwater channels and those with foundations close to the coast saw an immediate need to adapt. Similarly, families on Majuro felt an urgency to adapt as parts of Djarrit, Jenrok and Ajeltake were inundated during king tide events in 2014 and 2016. During field studies conducted from 2015 to 2017, low-lying areas in Uliga and Laura were also observed where heavy rains impacted erosion and flooding of slab on grade foundations. Many of these impacts to development and housing on Majuro were related to poor siting and maladapted building practices. While these issues of adaptation to sea-level rise and increased tropical storm frequency and severity speak to the overarching adaptation strategies of Aelon Kein Ad, adaptation at the family and community level reveal the problems of adopting Western architectural and planning traditions present in Aelon Kein Ad. The incommensurability of Western and Rimajol constructs of the built environment creates challenges in responding to community sustainability in a rapidly changing environment.

Adapting vernaculars Housing typologies, building strategies and materiality are key areas in which vernacular architecture in Aelon Kein Ad illustrates the impacts of foreign influence on vulnerability reduction. As imported architectures, namely from the United States, have almost entirely replaced Rimajol vernaculars born of Indigenous design intelligence, issues arise in the local adaptation of families to their housing stock, the means of maintaining buildings, and the materials available for repairs and refortifications. The following section expands on the interpretation of analysis conducted in ‘The Evolution of the Marshallese Vernacular House’ to include Rimajol reactions to foreign design influences and highlight cultural implications for climate change adaptation.

Housing typologies The vernacular architecture of Aelon Kein Ad has responded to climate variables in multiple forms. The traditional Rimajol thatch house, which is often referred to as the mon kijidrik, was raised on four posts (see Figure 8.1). The four posts of the traditional mon kijidrik represent the four posts which the heavens sit upon (joor).23 Within this framework, the four-post house represents a microcosm of Rimajol cosmology that is deeply engrained within a dialectic relationship between family and environment. This relationship of house, cosmology and environment parallels other Indigenous representations of the house, such as Nabokov and Easton’s description of the Haida house.24 Additionally, lifting the a-frame roof on four posts protects items stored above from flooding. Drawing parallels to the traditional houses of Kiribati,25 it could be concluded that the goal was to keep important cultural artefacts and keepsakes protected from sea inundation by placing them in the attic space of the gable roof.26 Figure 8.2 depicts the common housing typologies found in Aelon Kein Ad along with two traditional houses (the mon-kijidrik and the sleeping house). Many contemporary housing typologies in the Marshall Islands are influenced by various aid programmes that finance specific floor plans (typically Western tract house style) or import housing directly to the Marshalls from abroad. When asked to determine which housing typology represented a traditional house, most participants in the survey selected the mon kijidrik built on four posts. The mon kijidrik is commonly noted as the predominant traditional housing typology by Kotzebue, Kabua and Kramer, Erdland and Nevermann, and is represented through images in the Alele Museum – that pictured the above. This style likely was built for the iroij (chief) and the alaps (landowners). The second most common selection among those typologies depicted in Figure 8.2 was the contemporary

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Fig. 8.1  1821. Depiction of the traditional house. Illustration reproduced from: Kotzebue, Otto von. 1821. A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Bering’s Straits, for the Purpose of Exploring a North-East Passage, Undertaken in the Years 1815–18, at the Expense of His Highness the Chancellor of the Empire, Count Romanzoff, in the Ship Rurick, under the Command of the Lieutenant in the Russian Imperial Navy, Otto von Kotzebue.

Fig. 8.2  Common housing typologies found in Aelon Kein Ad. Top row from left to right: pandanus panels on wood a-frame located on grade, commonly referred to as a sleeping house; traditional mon kijidrik with a-frame structure lifted on four posts; self-built house constructed of local and imported materials. Bottom row from left to right: typhoon mon constructed by FEMA on Namdrik and Jaluit after Typhoon Alice in 1979; Asian Development Bank house plan with covered patio; American style house plan used in USDA housing programmes. (Reprinted from ‘The Continuity of Deep Cultural Patterns,’ by James Miller, 2018:124. Copyright 2018, the author.)

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concrete houses found on Majuro (bottom right). This demonstrates the pervasiveness of the American architectural influence, as evident in the adoption of the American suburban tract home in multiple housing programmes like the United States Department of Agriculture Mutual Self – Help Housing programme. Influence in the vernacular housing of the RMI also came through post-disaster reconstruction programmes. A unique shift in the housing on Namdrik took place following Typhoon Alice in 1979. Nearly the entire housing stock of the atoll was destroyed by the typhoon, and rather than rebuilding with traditional thatch houses as the residents had done following Typhoon Ophelia in 1958, the houses were replaced by the ‘typhoon mon’. The typhoon mon was a house designed by FEMA as a typhoon-proof transitional dwelling; it was originally introduced to Saipan and then imported to Namdrik. The replacement of the local housing with these plywood structures shifted the perceptions of the residents. One of the elders on Namdrik recalled the post-disaster reconstruction in 1980: They thought the plywood houses were better than hut houses. Better materials that do not require frequent repair. … Nowadays people think that plywood houses are better than hut houses. … Now, these hut houses are used for storage.

These houses replaced the mon kijidrik that were present on the island and only provided one large room for the family. Over time, residents adapted these single-room structures to create separations – between generations, genders or other uses. Issues with imported housing typologies were further discussed with residents of Laura. One man from Jeirok Laura did not appreciate the dependence on air-conditioning within the American style homes, ‘with imported housing comes imported mechanical systems’. The passive ventilation strategies that were core to the traditional thatch house have been replaced by the air-conditioning unit. The participant from Jeirok further elaborated: I really don’t like to stay in the air conditioning. … In the open-air cookhouse, I really like it. … I don’t know why we need all these fancy things. The only thing we need is sleep. But when in the cookhouse, you just lay down and fall asleep.

The cookhouse incorporates many of the traditional environmental controls of the mon kijidrik, such as passive ventilation and porous assemblies of pandanus thatch, and utilizes renewable materials. Imported housing typologies and materials perform poorly in the harsh climate; metal roofs act as ovens and poorly ventilated concrete structures develop mold. Rather than using energy intensive systems and non-renewable materials, it becomes more intuitive to reconnect with the natural environment and take advantage of passive-design strategies driven by Indigenous design intelligence. Whether it was the adaptation to American tract homes in Uliga, the influence of the Western-style kitchen or the need for privacy, the influence of imported housing models is at odds with the persistence of Rimajol culture and continuity of Rimajol design intelligence. Cultural change is evident as a hybridization of traditional, colonial and global patterns influences the political economy and the built environment it produces. Imported architecture is adopted over time for benefits in durability and maintenance; however, it is materially and spatially deficient within the context, requiring adaptation. Individuals and families adapt house layouts and exterior spaces to fit their needs, but due to the unfamiliarity with imported materials and construction systems they are not able to utilize traditional knowledge in improving indoor air circulation or utilizing renewable resources. The rigidity of the systems that produced the imported architecture in the Marshall Islands affect adaptation. Rather, what is needed to support climate change adaptation within the built-environment of Aelon Kein Ad are ‘soft’ approaches and flexible systems that pull away from a heavy reliance on imported materials and expertise, moving towards local ecologies.

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Building strategies and environmental response On an individual level, the building methods applied in adaptation to meet immediate needs resemble the ingenuity of traditional manifestations of Rimajol architecture – the positioning and design of landscaped berms and the use of hoods to mitigate the impacts of salt spray and high winds on windows while maintaining ventilation. The ordinal direction, east, is an important orientation in Rimajol culture. East is also the direction of the prevailing winds and the direction of the sunrise. Traditional settlements were typically located on the eastern side of islets, facing the lagoon.27 A taboo practice that reinforces housing arrangements and interior design is Kwon jittak lok (sleeping facing east), which draws importance to lolon (the place where your head rests). Related to this socio-spatial pattern, the rear side of the thatched house should not be entered or crossed because this is the place where the head rests. This taboo is closely practised in the case of the chief’s house.28 The significance drawn to the eastern orientation of the dwelling brings together cultural practices of mo (taboo) and Indigenous environmental knowledge. Sitting typically takes advantage of the prevailing winds for ventilation, and generally, houses were constructed in situ on the existing foundations of previous structures. Generally, the houses are sited along the lagoon to take advantage of the northeasterly prevailing wind. However, with the increase of recent king tides (cyclical inundation events), siting based on wind access causes other problems. One of the men from Mojero wēto talked about the issues his house had during the flooding of the area in 2014. My older brother liked the windy place because it was cooler. We didn’t expect sea levels to rise. … We didn’t know about global warming, so we didn’t care; we just wanted the wind to cool the place. … We never knew at the time, but now, wow!

Their house was situated at a low elevation and flooded. Before the 2014 flood the main concern was for a cool and windy location; since then, the elevation of the land is equally important. Based on conversations with families living on Namdrik, hedges and berms were commonly located along the eastern side of houses, both protecting the eastern side of the dwelling from people walking along the lagoon shore and protecting the eastern façade from the prevailing winds and salt spray. The eastern sides of dwellings on Namdrik typically had multiple design features that addressed these issues, such as window hoods and berms. Perhaps these are manifestations of taboo practices linked to ecological knowledge. Figure 8.3 shows a plan view of a house on Namdrik demonstrating the orientation to the lagoon and the prevailing winds. A series of pandanus trees were planted on a berm to reduce the impact of flooding on the house, and Figure 8.4 provides an image of the window hoods for reference. In regards to flooding, raising the foundation of a house is complicated by cultural practice and ecological knowledge. Where practised, mo constrain the height of a house to be no higher than the iroij, which might impact the protocol around raising a foundation. When discussing the recent king tide that flooded parts of Namdrik, a man provided an argument against raising the house: ‘If you raise the house and the water comes in, everything will die. Your house is up, but what are you going to do?’ His points resonated well with locals. Spending the time and energy into raising a house is only a temporary solution and not an effective one. The Indigenous knowledge considers sustainability at its root. Building adaptations, landscaping and proper siting are evident in the vernacular housing and rain harvesting. The importance of Indigenous knowledge is demonstrated in the ways inhabitants respond to the place and environment in built form. On Laura, traditional building strategies and methods tied to the relationship with the land have shifted due to imported architectural traditions. A woman from Laura questioned, ‘How do we get back to the

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Fig. 8.3  Partial site plan of Wijlang wēto demonstrating the use of pandanus trees on the east side to create a berm and barrier that protects from flooding. (Reprinted from ‘The Continuity of Deep Cultural Patterns,’ by James Miller, 2018:295. Copyright 2018, the author.)

way life was?’ Both this woman and another elder spoke to the issue of detachment from the environment and detachment from cultural tradition. They both argued that life is not sustainable as cultural practices are being lost. The vernacular architecture, and to an extent the vernacular settlement pattern of Laura, has been heavily influenced by colonial regimes (European, Japanese and American). Even in these mostly imported styles and materials, cultural patterns tend to prevail in the adaptation of space and reinterpretation of meaning. Three primary environmental responses documented on Laura included the creation of natural seawalls, the siting of housing in order to preserve agriculture and rainwater harvesting. Families are grappling with their approach to mitigating the amount of damage created by inundation events. Like Namdrik, the construction of berms is common on Laura. Today, berms are often created with built-up land, rocks and trees. Unfortunately, clear-cutting is often practised in the construction of these berms. A man from Likin Atbwe Wēto on Laura discussed the process of working with the alap and his knowledge of the land to best situate his house so that it does not negatively impact resource production. He recalled, ‘I tried to ask him if I could build a house, and then he told me he’s going to have his garden set up here. So those kind[s] of things can stop you from building.’ In this case, the response to the environment is also a response to cultural constraints.

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In the DUD, the continuity of Rimajol architectural traditions is less obvious. The preferred siting of the housing along the shoreline is drastically shifting due to the increased seriousness of inundation events and tropical storms. For many families, building along the shoreline is preferred, and the construction of seawalls provides more opportunities to accomplish this. Some families in Djarrit live on reclaimed land, constructed with the use of seawalls in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the risk of severe storms and flooding impacting a shoreline house is increasing. A man from Uliga explained that his family had preferred to build a house on the shore because it provided a breeze and was not developed at the time, but since, he somewhat regrets it, because of the risk that his house will be damaged during a storm or flood. Climate change is influencing the way residents in the DUD view environmental response in their building practices, similar to what was found on Namdrik. Environmental responsiveness is different in the urban centre given the density of housing and the value of the real estate. Siting housing in a manner that takes advantage of the trade winds remains important, but new concerns from climate events are affecting these decisions. As housing density increases in the urban centre, responses to these climatic issues will become more pressing, especially as families are extending their space to the seawalls. Moving between housing adaptations on Namdrik and Laura, consistent strategies are less obvious. One might argue as the population becomes more urbanized, it relies more heavily on outward solutions to local problems. On Majuro, speaking with various contractors, a common practice is to elevate the slab of a concrete block house using crushed coral gravel. For houses incorporating pilings, the floor joists are elevated above a reasonable height in response to potential flooding. Yet, these solutions do not mitigate the fatal issues inherent with non-Rimajol building traditions. Materials are not easily replaced, and maintenance is very challenging in such an unforgiving climate. The environmental response of the traditional built environment is also evident in the design of housing, and this response appears to have evolved through history. Environmental responses included the use of renewable resources, the storage of potable water and climatic response. Historical accounts discuss the addition of screens to protect the windward side of the mon kijidrik, the collection of rainwater for drinking and renewable resources used in the construction of the roofing.

Building materials The use of building materials began within a close relationship of the Rimajol and their environments, practices embedded in Indigeneity; materials evolved as influence came from the West and Japan. Erdland documented the use of split pandanus roofs, roof mats and lo (hibiscus stalks) used as a screen along the northeastern side of houses on Majuro.29 The sides of the house were originally open, but these screens protected the occupants from the harsh winds and rains. Similarly, flaps were added to the gable end of the mon kijidrik’s attic space to provide additional ventilation. These adaptations in response to the climate have taken different shapes over time. Spoehr documented similar features on Majuro in the 1940s as houses began to demonstrate more influences from Japanese and American housing typologies.30 The design of the thatched house provided a cool and comfortable interior in a hot and humid climate. However, as colonialism influenced building materials and building designs, cultural shifts became apparent, and these shifts impacted Rimajol resilience apparent in architectural traditions. Corrugated roofing began to replace the thatch roof and concrete or wood-framed walls replaced the four wooden posts; structures were no longer open and airy, but rather enclosed and hot. These structures also represented permanence, wealth and modernity; as some have argued, the introduction of Western housing increased the Rimajol desire for individualism.31 Newly imported durable materials shifted the cultural norms within the

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dwelling, such as collective construction processes, taboo practices and collective maintenance based on the cycles of the year. The influence of the Western housing style has also changed how individuals identify with dwelling on the land. Results from the author’s survey, conducted in 2017, provided insight into the use of imported versus local resources in the construction of buildings. While most construction material is imported from the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Taiwan, many families use local wood in the construction and repair of housing and ancillary buildings. Seventy-two per cent of respondents noted that they had used local wood for building. The survey identified twenty-one types of wood used in construction, indicating which are used most often. Table 8.1 provides a list of the different local woods used in construction with a brief description. Based on these findings, ni (coconut), ma (breadfruit) and kimeme (mangrove) maintain an important role in everyday construction material in Aelon Kein Ad.

Table 8.1  Type of local wood used in construction. Organized based on frequency of use from high to low as recorded in the survey32 Rimajol Names

Scientific Name

Description

Ni

Cocos nucifera L.

Coconut palm. Used primarily for posts. Can be milled into boards.

Mā

Artocarpus altilis (Parkins.) Fosb.

Breadfruit tree.

Kimeme

Luminitzera littorea (Jack) Voight

Native mangrove tree. Strong wood used for posts and milled into boards.

Bōb, edwaan, wūmaañ

Pandanus tectorius S. Parkinson ex z.

According the bwebwenato (oral traditions), Bōb originates from Madmad island of Namdrik Atoll. Leaves used for weaving pandanus panels for the roof of dwellings and side enclosures. Wood used in framing.

Lukwej or Jijo

Calophyllum inophyllum L.

Strong wood, used commonly in construction.

Kaar

Premna serratifolia L.

Medicinal plant. Wood used occasionally in make-shift repairs.

Ļō

Hibiscus tiliaceus L.

Wood primarily used in the construction of screen walls and fencing.

Kōñe or Kiej, Kiejor

Pemphis acidula Forst.

Known as ironwood. Commonly used in house construction.

Utilomar

Guettarda speciosa L.

Jon

Bruguiera gymnorrhiza (L.) Lam.

Durable wood used for house posts and may be milled into boards.

Piñpiñ

Hernandia nymphaeifolia L.

Common hard wood building material.

Kōņo

Cordia subcordata Lam.

Hard, fine-grained wood used for house poles.

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Ňeñe (Ratak), Kalañe (Rālik)

Suriana maritima L.

Armwe

Pipturus argenteus (Forst.F.) Wedd.

Kino

Phymatosorus grossus (Langsdorff & Fischer) Brownlie

Kiden

Tournefortia argentea L. f.

Strong wood used in house construction.

Hard wood used in construction, primarily for poles.

Kielomar

Aidia cochichinensis Lour.

Strong wood used in construction.

Nen

Morinda citrifolia L.

Medicinal plant.

Kōjbar

Neisosperma oppositifolium (Lam.) Fosb. & Sachet

Soft wood used for light construction.

In addition, the influence of new materials and construction methods altered traditional taboo practices surrounding dwelling, like lolon. While it is difficult to discern what was first, it is clear that imported architectures from the West and Japan influenced the transformation of social norms related to access, privacy and territoriality and the shifting norms influenced planning and construction. In interviews with elders on Laura and Namdrik, children were taught that daemons control access to footpaths leading to important houses, like that of the iroij, thus leaving the main path could lead to one’s demise. However, as these houses gained solid concrete walls, the demons were not a necessity in storytelling to protect access, privacy and territory. Primary paths along the lagoon became more prominent as a means for village egress, while permeable walls became more solid to provide needed security and privacy. In turn, these changes impacted the architecture’s response to the local environment, or the lack thereof. Over the past one hundred years, families who had passed on Rimajol architectural traditions had to quickly adapt to the new construction methods and materials; however, few carpenters learned the imported construction trades. On Namdrik, there was only one man trained in carpentry with the ability to repair Western-style houses (concrete post and beam with concrete block infill and conventional wood framing), but there were more than two dozen expert canoe builders. Everyone referred to this carpenter as the only person on-island with the ability to construct a concrete block house and a plywood house (conventional wood framed home built on-site with nominal dimensioned wood studs, and plywood sheeting imported from the United States), but through observations and participation in several canoe builds, it was clear that a high percentage of the male population on Namdrik was highly capable in carpentry. Realizing the gap of knowledge between Western carpentry and Rimajol carpentry, the Marshallese ‘Homeowner Handbook’ demonstrates several lashing techniques in place of specific metal hardware, lashings that are borrowed from Rimajol canoes.33 This example from Namdrik highlights the lack of knowledge around the materials and construction methods used in housing in the RMI. There is a need for housing programmes in Aelon Kein Ad to build capacity within communities to better adapt to climate change; this includes utilizing Rimajol knowledge systems like those built around the concept of kumit. Another disconnect created by Western materials and methods is illustrated by the adaptation of families to USDA-funded houses that were not designed for the climate on Namdrik. Their exposed openings on the windward side of the house became a problem over time due to the harsh winds, salt spray and rain. Responses included placing heavy coral slabs or logs on top of roofs to hold the corrugated sheathing down during heavy winds, placing weather hoods over openings on the windward side of the house, and raising

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the house above sea level. Figure 8.4 provides a common detail found along the windward side of many houses in the RMI. An existing window is in-filled with a simple weather hood constructed of corrugated metal or plywood attached to a wood frame. This design provides ventilation to the house while protecting the opening from driving rain and wind that could damage material possessions inside. In many cases, these are installed to replace windows that have not been maintained due to the lack of replacement parts. While housing has been oriented optimally to meet social constructs and environmental realities, the building materials and construction process pose a problem. The material and construction methods used were adopted from international housing programmes that employed concrete block and plywood houses within Western architectural traditions, not Rimajol architectural traditions. As previously stated, materiality of Western housing, their spatial configurations and functional intent create issues tied to maintenance and use. Aelon Kein Ad needs to move away from housing models that do not recognize the significance of Indigenous Knowledge and the technical prowess in sustaining communities. The continual reliance on foreign materials and imports places a burden on sustainable housing models that can adapt to a rapidly changing climate.34 Rather, utilizing frameworks such as Reimaanlok and ‘Ridge to Reef’ will help develop a national housing strategy that utilizes Rimajol architectural traditions rather than Western. Within self-built housing, household adaptations to existing housing and housing repairs, we see Rimajol knowledge systems playing out that demonstrate resilience and strength. Changes in building materials

Fig. 8.4  Photograph of a weather hood vent constructed in place of a window on the lagoon side (eastern façade) of a house on Moneibel wēto, Namdrik. (Photo by author, 2016.)

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have played an important role in the evolution of Rimajol vernacular housing and the ability to adapt to climate change. Yet, within these changes, cultural patterns of use continue to assist Rimajol families to adapt despite the incongruity of foreign materials and construction methods. The use of renewable resources is necessary given limited resource availability on the islands and the high cost of imported goods. Traditionally, this was evident in hardwood used in the construction of the building frame and the pandanus and coconut frond thatching used for the roofing. Historically, this pattern of sustainable resource allocation transformed into the reuse of recycled goods brought from abroad. Spoehr (1949) noted the use of salvaged United States Navy lumber in the construction of housing on Laura and the use of salvaged canvases for walls and roofs. This continued in 2019, seventy years later. The design of structures continues to respond to the environment through the use of screens, the recycling of materials and the integration of rainwater harvesting into the house. These bottom-up processes rooted in Rimajol knowledge systems demonstrate a path forward if capacity is built.

Discussion: New vernaculars In ‘Living Architecture’, Marcel Vellinga speaks to the evolution of both vernacular architecture and our approach to understanding vernacular architecture.35 Just as it is necessary to apply different lenses in the theoretical development of vernacular architecture studies, it is necessary to view vernacular transformations within non-Western architectural paradigms. Vernaculars of Indigenous peoples need to be understood through the systems of Indigenous knowledge that they are reimagined in. In the case of Oceanic architectures, we begin to understand cultural resurgence within the façade of Western architectural traditions. Indigenous architectural traditions provide a counternarrative to centuries of colonial influence, and their processes embedded in a reciprocal relationship between the human and non-human world provide resilient strategies for climate change adaptation. Projects have been proposed by both David Rockwood36 and the author37 to approach climate change adaptation within vernacular architectures to improve the longevity of habitation on the atolls. Rockwood et al.’s proposal provides an engineered solution with better fit climatically and aesthetically to the tropics than existing concrete houses; however, the cost is prohibitive. The author along with partners presented a model that utilizes Indigenous processes within a systems approach to housing design, integrated within cultural, environmental and resource concerns. However, many variables continue to undermine the viability of such projects, such as the implications of saltwater intrusion on crops and freshwater supply. Many ideas have been proposed in the RMI to adapt to these scenarios, including salt-tolerant crops, raised gardens and fishponds. However, it is hard to see how these proposed systems for the support of habitation will continue to perpetuate the deep cultural identity to the Land.38 With the increasing influence of international attention and aid on Aelon Kein Ad, the financial capacity to develop new housing programmes is probable. With the increasing determination and will of younger Rimajol activists, like Broderick Menke, who has attained a core ministry position, a new resurgence of Rimajol knowledge is underway. The strengthening of local resilience from community-based perspectives is now taking centre stage, and communities are demanding transparency. For example, Kwajalein Atoll Development Agency’s (KADA) Kwajalein mid-corridor housing project on Ebeye experienced renewed speculation by the local community as the plans and implementation of the project undermined the will of the people.39 This led to the call for community-based practices within the planning, design and development of one hundred housing units. The proposed design was lacking in response to local-community needs. It is a crucial failure that this project neglected to engage with the community when Kwajalein Senator David Paul called for a redevelopment plan to systematically transform the urban layout of Ebeye.

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The community’s assertion of their role in the development of housing and urban planning on Ebeye speaks to a paradigm shift within Oceanic development projects. Projects that were once led from the top-down by large multi-national architecture and engineering firms like Tetra Tech and Beca are now required to listen to the will of the community rather than the profit margins of their scalability and affiliations with government officials. The projects, like the Kwajalein Mid-corridor housing project, demonstrate weak cultural responsiveness and outdated sustainability practices. In part, this is based on conventional design and construction means and methods combined with a lack of deep engagement with place and culture. To require outsiders to do better work requires leadership from chiefs, landowners and community members requiring more participatory processes that build local capacity and the braiding of Indigenous knowledge with good global practices.

Climate change adaptation – Migration Internal migration To the detriment of resilience, contemporary histories of population movements in Aelon Kein Ad and settlement have been shaped by geopolitical influence on livelihoods and the distribution of economic development, education, healthcare and transportation. These processes led to the urbanization of specific areas defined by their importance within a global rather than local realm of power and control. Thus, the majority of the population resides on smaller, less stable islets susceptible to climatic threats. The narrative of displacement and abandonment of home appears to drive programmes for seawalls and land reclamation rather than other, more sustainable outlooks. Exploring opportunities presented within the dynamism of land availability requires a reconsideration of land use planning that recognizes island changes and not geopolitical structures of power, echoing Kench and Ford. This would re-centre Indigenous Knowledge in the architecture and planning of Aelon Kein Ad. Land tenure and resource allocation need to support internal migration within atoll nations. This strategy presents a pathway forward for the sovereignty of atoll nations. Environmental adaptation strategies promoted through modes of sustainable resource management have been conducted in Aelon Kein Ad through various international programmes such as ‘Ridge to Reef’ (R2R), Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and the USAID Pacific-American Climate Fund. The influence of these international development programmes on localized adaptation strategies is problematic because these programmes bias Western scientific knowledge over Indigenous knowledge. However, sustainability and resilience are embedded practices within Marshallese epistemologies. In regard to the built-environment, the continued influence of international aid programmes is evident within proposed adaptation strategies, such as the ‘Republic of the Marshall Islands Urban Resilience Project’ funded by the World Bank Group. These projects perpetuate the influence of US neo-imperialism.40 Furthermore, these projects and programmes seldom address peri-urban and rural communities. Meanwhile, individuals and families have been finding ways to implement adaptation strategies to the best of their abilities, sometimes with assistance from programmes like the Homeowners Handbook and other times based on Indigenous knowledge.

External migration Climate change has been straining already sparse resources, making adaptation increasingly difficult for families to support livelihoods. The assessment of risk and habitability for families in Aelon Kein Ad is

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dire and the implications of the island nation’s colonial influence complicate adaptive strategies.41 As the Marshall Islands Climate and Migration project has determined, the negative net migration experience in Aelon Kein Ad is connected to the outlook of habitability on the islands.42 Van der Geest et al. speak to the losses and damages that take effect despite efforts in mitigation or adaptation, shedding light on the fundamental issue of habitability.43 Losses and damages occur when adaptation measures are unsuccessful, insufficient, not implemented, or impossible to implement; when adaptation measures have unrecoverable costs; or when measures are maladaptive, making ecosystems and societies more vulnerable.44

For example, it might be possible to rebuild and raise Majuro by six meters, but is this feasible? At what point does the policy decision implicate resettlement? In other publications, I have argued for the application of Indigenous Design Knowledge within Rimajol settlement in the United States.45 Current work investigates the presence of deep-cultural patterns within Rimajol communities in Hawaii, Oregon and Arkansas. It is apparent that these communities are undergoing their own placemaking processes that conserve cultural practices and provide community support. Patterns that continue to be important within Rimajol adaptation in the growing diaspora include ippan dron (togetherness), enra (resource sharing) and kumit (working together, collective action). Sharing resources and collective responsibility are core to the strength within these communities. While gathering has been difficult with the recent coronavirus pandemic, the commitment to one another as a community has demonstrated resilience.

Conclusion – Adaptation and decolonization There is a need to address the neoliberal agenda of sustainable development – a façade of neocolonialism. Indigenous Ecological Knowledge has been a keen focus of researchers focusing on community adaptation to climate change. Surprisingly, little attention has been drawn to Indigenous production of the built environment. More specifically, little research has been conducted to understand the continuity of Indigenous Design Knowledge in the production of culturally supportive environments throughout periods of intense social change The processes taking place are two-fold – i) local adaptation driven by international interests and climate displacement, and ii) settlement in the United States, driven by family interests – from the bottom up. These two trajectories highlight systemic issues in international development, prioritizing Western knowledge over non-Western knowledge. They also highlight the vulnerability embedded within this mode of thinking. To rely heavily on advanced technologies for architectural adaptation in Aelon Kein Ad is not sustainable – financially, culturally or environmentally. It may allow sustained inhabitation of land – elevated, barricaded by seawalls or otherwise, but does it represent the identity and values of the people? Decolonization of climate change adaptation strategies is needed. Through the geopolitical fog of Western influence, Indigenous communities are reasserting sovereignty, revitalizing Indigenous knowledge, and are making decisions that are community-based rather than influenced by UN grant conditionalities. Resources need to be directed to support these endeavours, and the field of international development needs to realize its colonial tendencies to prioritize modernity over community. Through a deep relationship with the earth, water and sky, Oceanic peoples remained interconnected through their voyaging traditions. Oceania became the sea that connected people, resources, ideas and knowledge. However, nearly 300 years of Western incursion in the Pacific Ocean and colonization of ‘our sea of islands’ has brought a new form of seeing the world – one locked by a grid of borders and territories

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entrenched in the social constructs of the West.46 These Western ways of seeing severed the umbilical cord that connected Oceanic peoples to the land. It broke the etak (to fix one’s place in time and space) that kept the canoe stable in the water as the islands moved around it.47 At least, through Western eyes of conquest and domination, it appeared to be severed permanently. It was not long ago that the islanders were able to sustain networks across vast space and sustain populations off the bounty of the land through architectures of abundance. These networks of kinship and trade provided redundancies when disasters occurred, or production yields were too low for the populations; they provided routes for families to take and find refuge until it was safe to return. The intricate knowledge of place, time and dwelling supported a sustainable and resilient future, always looking to the knowledge of the past to sustain the land for the future, knowing that we are borrowing the land from our children. In the Aelon Kein Ad, like in Hawai’i, colonial occupations started to settle these Western frontiers in the manner befitting of the European countries they stemmed from. The change, albeit slow at first, began to change the direct relationship between material, resource and built-form. Settlement no longer depended on familial organization and relationships but was rather replaced with a European concept of land ownership. Collective identities began to transform into individual identities. The socio-culture patterns began to morph, becoming rigid and less able to adapt. The land transformed under the extractive logic of capitalism, it became less diverse as the market economy was introduced. Less diversity led to less adaptable landscapes. For more than 1000 years, populations had met the balance between land-forming for superior agroforestry and the need for the land to be resilient to flooding and typhoons. Those systems were replaced with the logic of yielding maximum gain for the market – whether copra in Aelon Kein Ad or sugarcane in Hawai’i. As markets were introduced, settlement shifted as the port became the centre of community life. The cartesian grid was introduced to provide a clear logic for city planning and infrastructure to support the extractive processes of the local market economy. The shift towards private property and building lots further removed families from their identity with the land as sibling. In Aelon Kein Ad, it is easy to see these changes given that the size of the urban centres on Ebeye and Majuro is easy to measure. It provides a narrative similar to those that took form across Oceania. Today we see the remnants of colonialism or the active perpetuation of settler-colonialism informing these landscapes. The dominance of a Western ideology on land use, planning and architecture in ‘our sea of islands’ is becoming extraordinarily problematic in our current fight against climate change and efforts to adapt. In this chapter, I have demonstrated that adaptation is weakened by the systems of colonialism. To provide strength amidst these systemic issues, we need to dismantle the Western systems of planning and find resilience through the resurgence of our ways of knowing. We have a deep connection to place, to the land and water and sky that has sustained us, to bring it back will provide a path forward. The architectural and planning traditions of Western nations need to be accountable, as complicit agents of colonization.

Notes 1. Reimaanlok National Planning Team. (2008), Reimaanlok: National Conservation Area Plan for the Marshall Islands 2007–2012. Republic of the Marshall Islands: Government of the RMI, Climate Change Directorate. 2. L. T. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd Edition (London: Zed Books, 2012), 25. 3. Indigenous architecture and planning are based on Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies that are deeply grounded in the specificity of place. Refer to the work of Albert Refiti, Patrick Stewart, Laura Harjo, Ted Jojolla and Hirini Matunga among others for more in-depth explorations of Indigenous architecture and planning.

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4. Dasgupta, S., Laplante, B., Murray, S. and Wheeler, D. (2009). ‘Sea-level Rise and Storm Surges: A Comparative Analysis of Impacts in Developing Countries’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series. 5. G. McGranahan, D. Balk and B. Anderson, ‘The Rising Tide: Assessing the Risks of Climate Change and Human Settlements in Low Elevation Coastal Zones’, Environment and Urbanization 19, no. 1, (2007): 17–37; P. Nunn and N. Mimura, ‘Vulnerability of South Pacific Island Nations to Sea-level Rise’, Journal of Coastal Research (1997): 133–51. 6. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, First paperback Edition (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2013). 7. Paul S. Kench, Murray R. Ford and Susan D. Owen, ‘Patterns of Island Change and Persistence Offer Alternate Adaptation Pathways for Atoll Nations’, Nature Communications 9, no. 1 (2018). 8. It will be important to study how national policy shifts in response to the results of the 2020 census, which revealed a 25 per cent decline in population. A hypothesis for the population decline is accelerated emigration. 9. Dirk Spennemann, ‘Traditional and Nineteenth Century Communication Patterns in the Marshall Islands’, Micronesian Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 4, no. 1 (2005): 25–52. 10. Laura Harjo, Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2019). 11. Miller, James, ‘The Continuity of Deep-Cultural Patterns: A Case Study of Three Marshallese Communities’, Dissertation, Eugene, OR: University of Oregon, 2018. 12. James Miller, ‘The Evolution of the Marshallese Vernacular House’, Fabrications 30, no. 1 (2020): 110–36. 13. Wetos are the Marshallese systems of land tenure, which is based on matrilineal inheritance. 14. Dirk Spennemann, ‘Nontraditional Settlement Patterns and Typhoon Hazard on Contemporary Majuro Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands’, Environmental Management 20, no. 3 (1996): 337–48. 15. ‘The Continuity of Deep-Cultural Patterns’. 16. The administrative center for the Trust Territory of the Pacific in Majuro was built upon the foundations of the Japanese military installation in the same location. 17. ‘Nontraditional Settlement Patterns’. 18. ‘Patterns of Island Change’. 19. The recently completed Marshall Islands Stadium, in preparation for the 2023 Micronesian Games, is demonstrative of this strategy. 20. Kees van der Geest, Maxine Burkett, Juno Fitzpatrick, Mark Stege and Brittany Wheeler, ‘Climate Change, Ecosystem Services and Migration in the Marshall Islands: Are They Related?’ Climatic Change 161, no. 1 (2020): 109–27. 21. ‘Reimaanlok: National Conservation Area Plan’. 22. Hess, Don, Dennis Hwang, Karl Fellenius, Ian Robertson, Mark Stege and Ben Chutaro (2018), ‘Homeowner Handbook to Prepare for Natural Disaster so That Risks to Families and Properties May Be Reduced.’ Republic of the Marshall Islands: Marshall Islands National Disaster Management Office; Ford, Murray (2013), ‘A Landowner’s Guide to Coastal Protection’, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi: University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program. 23. Ahlgren explains that Joor is ‘an important conceptual framework for division of the earthly realm into sea, sky, and land (aelon kein), and the foundations of knowledge (pedped in jela ko ad)’ in Ahlgren, Ingrid A., ‘The Meaning of Mo: Place, Power and Taboo in the Marshall Islands’, Dissertation, Canberra: The Australian National University, 2016. p. 63–4. 24. P. Nabokov and R. Easton, Native American Architecture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 38. 25. See John Hockings, Traditional Architecture in the Gilbert Islands: A Cultural Perspective UQP Paperbacks (St Lucia, Queensland, Australia : Portland, Or: University of Queensland Press, 1989). 26. These items may include fishing nets, woven mats, woven clothing, woven baskets and other important items of Marshallese material culture.

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27. ‘Nontraditional Patterns’. 28. ‘The Meaning of Mo’. 29. Erdland, A., Die Marshall Insulanur: Leben Und Sitte, Sinn Und Religion Eines Sudsee-Volkes (Münster: W: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1914. 30. Alexander Spoehr, Majuro: A Village in the Marshall Islands Vol. 39. Fieldiana: Anthropology. Chicago: Chicago Natural History Museum, 1949). 31. Jan Rensel and Margaret Rodman (eds.), Home in the Islands: Housing and Social Change in the Pacific (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997). 32. See ‘Plants and Environments of the Marshall Islands’ for more information on the uses of each plant, https:// www.hawaii.edu/cpis/MI/MarshNames.html. 33. ‘Homeowner Handbook’. 34. Rockwood, David, Julia Teles da Silva, Søren Olsen, Ian Robertson and Tuan Tran (2015), ‘Design and Prototyping of a FRCC Modular and Climate Responsive Affordable Housing System for Underserved People in the Pacific Island Nations’, Journal of Building Engineering, 4 (December): 268–82. Miller, James, Sun Xiaonuan and Matthew Bunza (2019), ‘Future Vernaculars: Towards a Process-Based Dwelling Ecosystem in Pacific Atoll Nations in Proceedings of the 7th International Network of Tropical Architecture. Brisbane: The University of Queensland. 35. M. Vellinga, ‘Living Architecture: Re-imagining Vernacularity in Southeast Asia and Oceania’, Fabrications 30, no. 1 (2020): 11–24. 36. ‘Design and Prototyping’. 37. ‘Future Vernaculars: Towards a Process-Based Dwelling Ecosystem’. 38. Land is capitalized to reflect the Indigenous perspective described in Mushuana Goeman, ‘Land as Life: Unsettling the Logics of Containment’, in Native Studies Keywords, ed. S. N. Teves, A. Smith and M. Raheja (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 71–89 39. Johnson, Giff, ‘Project Launched but Funding Issues Loom’, The Marshall Islands Journal, 21 June 2019. 40. Miller, James, ‘Questioning Sustainability: A Transformative Approach to Human Resettlement’, in Architecture of Complexity (Salt Lake City, UT: ARCC, 2017). 41. Autumn S. Bordner, Caroline E. Ferguson and Leonard Ortolano, ‘Colonial Dynamics Limit Climate Adaptation in Oceania: Perspectives from the Marshall Islands’, Global Environmental Change 61, (2020) (March). 42. Marshall Islands Climate & Migration Project, www.rmi-migration.com 43. ‘Climate Change, Ecosystem Services and Migration in the Marshall Islands’. 44. ‘Climate change, Ecosystem Services and Migration in the Marshall Islands’, P. 222. 45. J. Miller, ‘Indigenous Placemaking in the Climate Disapora: Rimajol Resettlement in the U.S.’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 32, no. 2 (2021): 39–52. 46. Epili Hau’ofa, ‘Our Sea of Islands’, The Contemporary Pacific 6, no. 1 (1994): 148–61. 47. Vincente Diaz, ‘No Island Is an Island’, in Native Studies Keywords, ed. Stephanie Teves, Andrea Smith and Michelle Raheja (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 2015), 90–108.

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9

Papua New Guinea’s vernacular architecture, from relics to reframing culture: Kunguma and Tubusereia



ROSEMARIE H. RUSCH, JOHARI HUSSEIN NASSOR AMAR AND LYNN A. ARMITAGE

Introduction In Oceania, an escalating demand for housing solutions that meet the needs of both urban and rural residents has been highlighted by the impact of population increase and in-migration resulting in informal settlement expansion and resultant development and economic crises. Jones suggests it is necessary to rethink the approach to the myriad forms of settlements and villages in the wider urban context, to understand the people and processes involved in building Pacific towns and cities, and how they can be best supported and managed, to provide for a more equitable solution.1 Often composed of migrants from other parts of a country, settlements, villages, towns and cities in Oceania represent a diversity of cultures and language groups, with house construction based on traditional norms and values. ‘Tradition’ is among the most widely used terms in the literature about culture and society, but attempts to elucidate exactly what ‘tradition’ means are either assumed or contested descriptions in the social and cultural sciences, as well as in the built environment literature. Although Busse describes tradition as a general process of something being handed down from one generation to the next, Shils proposes that traditions are beliefs with a particular social structure linked to authoritative attachments to the past,2 and innovation patterns that led to fundamental change in which the past persists.3 Tilley on the other hand presents tradition as a representation of social identity that is governed by the past while at the same time carrying a post-traditional society that has thrust the notions of collective traditions and shared material forms (whether remembered or imagined) into a semblance of cultural continuity.4 In Papua New Guinea (PNG), the common threads that bind urban villages to traditional villages, specifically the complexity of what constitutes house and home in transition, are key to understanding housing transformation processes, and the fundamental part played by architecture in cultural identity, as suggested by Davis.5 Peoples’ need for housing is a basic one which, in PNG, is rooted in village life. These buildings embody the character of their makers and unconsciously reflect the everyday life of a culture. Inevitably these issues lead to further debate on the meaning of culture in the PNG built environment, where the ephemeral nature of traditional architecture means that physical examples may no longer exist, and where historical records reflect a Western outlook that Scaglion notes may not provide an authentic voice.6 Consequently, this chapter is concerned with the relationship between urban and traditional village housing. The aim of the study is to understand people’s perceptions about what constitutes traditional housing in villages and village-like urban areas. The key question of this research and this chapter is whether traditional socio-spatial patterns persist. As such, it is necessary to define traditional architecture in PNG, to understand how it is used, how it changes with time, its function and cultural constructs, and how these transformation processes can influence architectural solutions in villages and village-like settlements.

The transition from pre-colonial to post-Independence settlement has, arguably, contributed to the debate on what constitutes value in terms of housing in PNG where the physical pattern of dispersed settlements of homogeneous clans, tribes and ethnic groups has broken boundaries and expanded to new peri-urban village-like settlements of heterogeneous mixed kin and non-kin residents. Claims to occupation, ownership and use of land are disputed, leading to a proliferation of squatter and informal settlements.7 The term ‘squatter settlements’ in PNG generally refers to the illegal occupation of state land, whereas ‘informal settlements’ are defined by arrangements negotiated with customary landowners, and may be indistinguishable spatially from traditional villages, the three together becoming the dominant settlement forms. Precincts within the major cities, formerly occupied by colonial administrators and controlled by the State since the country gained independence in 1974, are ‘covenant areas’. These are subject to building codes and a higher standard of construction but are nonetheless largely self-regulated. The two case studies discussed in this research are traditional villages under customary land title. Most PNG settlements are a result of cultural permeation on the fringes of cities outside government jurisdiction, and have developed organically as ethnic enclaves, retaining many characteristics of their rural villages of origin. The dual land tenure system, which includes Alienated Land Tenure, owned and controlled by the State, and Customary Land Tenure (97 per cent of all land in PNG) held by tribes, clans and land groups, where ownership is dictated by local customs and traditional values and beliefs,8 often leads to disputes. While customary land use provides for identity and community continuity, it does not extend to individual ownership or disposal rights. As Sillitoe points out,9 historical tribal attitudes to land prevail, for example, in the Southern Highlands, and while exact boundaries may be indistinct, ‘continuity of possession depends on narrative history’. Similar practices are noted in studies of other PNG cultural areas,10 making it difficult to provide for housing choices outside village-like constraints. Although people can own land individually in PNG, ‘the legislative response to land matters places an unequally heavy emphasis on the collective ownership of land’.11 Moreover, Connell posits that land tenure determines the pattern and availability of affordable housing in urban areas,12 while lack of tenure results in poor-quality, high-density temporary housing, often leading to degraded environments and problematic legal, social, environmental and economic factors for management of customary land. When discussing the transition to independence, Rowley stated that no general description can do justice to the many differences in systems of belief, economic activity and social organization that exist in PNG,13 and that ‘even when they live in towns, most [people] retain their village-conditioned attitudes’. Nevertheless, rapid expansion, socio-economic factors and overcrowding suggest the disappearance of architectural cultural distinctiveness that once existed. Busse proposes that after PNG independence, politicians and bureaucrats saw culture as a commodity for the tourism market and not as a way of life linked to people and the places in which they lived.14 In this respect it is important to consider what people understand to be a traditional home and whether these homes meet their contemporary needs. In PNG, the practice of architecture in the formal sense has little connection to the ways in which people shape their lives and their homes. Whilst several commentators have observed that traditional residential buildings would be considered ‘inadequate’ and falling below UN goals for safe and affordable housing for all, such external perceptions – which focus on physical form – tend to be Eurocentric.15 The priorities of residents are more functional. They value locations which embrace kinship support and structures, and the associated benefits of informal trading networks at the expense of the physical form of a building. The complex balance between environmental, social and economic factors results in a group’s adaptive strategies within its ecological setting, and encourages a particular designed environment based on values, which lead to the constructed norms that broadly distinguish one group from another.16 This does not

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explain the variety of built forms in similar ecological settings; even so, it is perhaps these adaptive strategies that complicate establishing a baseline from which to gauge the extent of selective or imposed change in traditional village housing, particularly when groups or clans form alliances or trading relationships across far ranging regional networks.17 This chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork for a larger doctoral study that looks at housing typology in two different PNG loci, Kunguma in PNG Western Highlands Province and Tubusereia in Central Province on the southern PNG coast.18 The two villages were both visited in 2016 and again in 2017. Any research in PNG requires gatekeeper permissions, making access to villages a challenging process. As the intent was to compare rural villages with their urban counterparts, it is on this basis, and earlier personal connections established by the author in these villages, that the two case study villages were selected. Davis suggests modern scholarship in vernacular architecture takes the position that building knowledge is diffused throughout and across cultures, as a result of the relationships between architecture and social values, architecture and urban space,19 the present and the past and the continuing connections between one culture and another through time and place. Thus, the next section of this chapter provides the historical context of the research, followed by the background to the case study, which is to understand how housing transformation takes place and the implications of increased urbanization on traditional architecture in contemporary PNG. The research reported here commenced with an initial review of archival material and associated literature and was followed by a field work phase which collected further documentation by means of face-to-face survey interviews and focus group interviews as well as participant observation of the physical and spatial

Fig. 9.1  Papua New Guinea regional map, showing study locations; Area 1 Rural and Area 2 Urban.20

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aspects of village housing. Photo elicitation was employed to stimulate discussion and interaction and to enquire about residents’ recollections of social change. These empirical techniques were applied during two in-country field work visits in 2016 and 2017. Figure 9.1 indicates the location of the case study villages. Kunguma is a village in the province of the Highlands and is identified as Study Area 1. Tubusereia (Study Area 2) is, by contrast, located on the coast in the Central Province. These two locations were chosen because they represent quite different geographic, cultural and social contexts, overlain by a very different history of exposure to foreign and colonial contact as detailed in the two case study sections, respectively.

Historical context of pressures for change on PNG vernacular architecture Papua New Guinea is a group of islands between the Coral Sea and the South Pacific Ocean, east of Indonesia. The geographic variation of PNG reflects its biological diversity, accompanied by an extensive cultural diversity, with the country having more than 800 language groups.21 Colonized as a German Protectorate in the north of the island and British New Guinea in the south in 1884, PNG was finally granted independence in 1975 and, arguably, a national identity forged from its many capricious administrations. From the initial forays of Christian missionaries into the country around the third quarter of the nineteenth century and the country’s annexure to the British Empire, three periods of change can be identified, these being the colonial period until the start of the First World War; a second period from then until the end of the Second World War; and the third, post-war, period to the present day. Broadly speaking, the impacts of colonization on the society were a reflection of the self-interest of various dominant groups. During the colonial period, agendas such as a belief in the need to save souls were superseded by more strategic and commercial developmental pressures where the introduction of indentured labour engendered new patterns of movement and settlement.22 The second period was characterized by an overarching focus on colonial interests arising primarily from the country’s strategic geographic location as a buffer against invasion of Australia from the north.23 In practical terms, one aspect which continued was the removal of physically fit men from the villages, for government service. Notwithstanding Australian policy, a government-appointed anthropologist, F.E. Williams,24 recognized the beneficial role of tradition on the well-being of the communities, while noting that reliance on the missions by the under-resourced government administration, to establish and operate hospitals and schools, could have a detrimental effect on village culture, identity, lifestyles and housing. From the outset of the First World War, to the end of the Second World War, the focus was on protecting colonial interests, with little interference in traditional ways of living. By this time, it was recognized that tradition could co-exist with modern ways, though not in towns which were reserved for non-Indigenous residents. European-style buildings were constructed in towns and prefabricated housing was imported, but there was little discernible impact in villages.25 The post-war years saw a resurgence of ‘European’ enterprise and reconstruction programmes, but also an increase in rural-urban drift and subsequent erosion of village traditional architectures.26 From the 1960s, pressures – such as nationalism and mineral ­exploitation – contributed to the emergence of a landless class of citizens, and to new elites with political and commercial influence.

Post-colonial transformation Several sources confirm that Papua New Guinea once possessed a rich traditional built heritage suited to local material availability, climate, human skills base, economy and way of life.27 Prior to the 1800s, village architecture in PNG varied enormously from region to region, retaining distinctive styles despite inter-tribal

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trading. European colonization began a time of exponential change in development and cultural heritage for the peoples of PNG.28 Papua New Guinean traditional architecture was classifiable into broad categories consisting largely of ephemeral thatched and woven structures including long, round, bowed and post-and-beam forms.29 Within these broad groups, individual style and materiality varied, despite at least 400 years of ‘Hiri’ trading (annual fleets of sailing canoes trading ceramic pots for sago and other food items with coastal villages on the Gulf of Papua), more than 1200 years of earlier trading patterns, and sustained contact with colonial enterprise. Regional styles remained distinct, while village architectures maintained individual cultural forms and practices that reflected the geographic environments in which they existed prior to colonization. Nevertheless, change was inevitable once the Government implemented labour recruitment from the Gulf District for the Vailala oil fields, plantations and the Public Works Department in Port Moresby as early as 1913. These contracts resulted in sustained contact with Western-style culture, education and the accumulation of cash by younger men, which led to the erosion of traditional lines of authority, contributing to the continuing drift away from village life and thus the effective decline of traditional architecture.30 The absence of men from the villages which accelerated during the Second World War changed the settlement patterns away from that of autonomous villages clustered into small family groups, to complexes of two or three merged villages. In these, some houses were built along similar lines to European houses, arranged in straight lines facing a road or common area. Villages evacuated for use by the military during the Second World War were rebuilt by the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU).31 By the 1950s, urban villages and settlements had increased rapidly, as had the rural population.32 With 95–96 per cent living in rural areas, and most Indigenous workers in urban areas earning less than AUD10.00 a week,33 it became obvious that there was an urgent need for affordable accommodation.

Fig. 9.2  Architectural change: background context. By author. Compiled from literature.35

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Inevitably, affordable came to mean low cost which in turn meant a reduction in size to family houses of 12ft × 10ft (3.6 m × 3.0 m), and consequently loss of quality, due to overcrowding.34 A broad-brush view of architectural change in PNG, since European contact, is shown in Figure 9.2. Successive policies in terms of housing have resulted in a lack of regulation in different settlement areas. Covenants and higher building regulations apply in the central city, but few government regulations – nor basic services – make provision for squatter or informal settlements. Similarly, there are no housing restrictions for traditional villages; customary land is largely self-regulated. A government submission to Canberra in May 1969 noted the main settlement problem issues to be overcrowding, poor sanitation, a breakdown in village life and ‘sub-human’ housing conditions.36 These were more obvious in the towns and settlements, but gradually diminished in the more remote traditional village lifestyles and housing. Although a united country after 1974 independence, fragmentation and regionalism in PNG was difficult to eradicate. Highlanders were, and remain, largely subsistence farmers and had little in common with the coastal Papuans who had much longer exposure to colonial influences.37 Neither their customs nor their languages were the same. Similarly, their architectures were distinctive and unique to their regions.

Case study 1: PNG Highlands Kunguma village, Western Highlands Province Kunguma village is located in the Western Highlands Province (WHP), one of several provinces in this central region of PNG, the others being Enga, Southern Highlands, Eastern Highlands, Simbu, Hela and Jiwaka. Mount Hagen, the capital, was established as a patrol post in 1936 in the Wahgi Valley of the Hagen Range. WHP covers an area of 4,299 square kilometres since Jiwaka Province (the Jimi, Wahgi and Kambia areas) was split from it in 2012. In the 2011 census, 362,850 inhabitants were counted in WHP, including Jiwaka.38 Much of the land, thought to have been settled about 9000 years ago, is under cultivation, predominantly with sweet potato, taro and yams.39 Golson et  al. draw the conclusion that house mounds of individual houses studied at the Kuk Swamp archaeological site nearby were similar to those in unpublished data about houses in and around Kuk (the Hagen–Nebilyer-Wahgi area in which Kunguma sits),40 collected during Ron Lampert’s ethnographic recording of prehistoric houses excavated in the New Guinea Highlands in 1973.41 The terrain here is notably rugged. Mount Hagen is the traditional home of the Melpa people. Strathern and Stewart show,42 based on figures since Australian explorers first entered the Highlands, that a process of expansion, decline and migration, over time, determined the demographic balance of tribal groups in the Mt Hagen region. They contend that this was the result of complex effects of warfare in response to imminent or immediate pressures. Similar studies on tribal, clan or sub-clan alliances between the Hagen– Nebilyer-Wahgi peoples by Ketan and subsequently Henry are an indication of the complexity of determining regional identity and tradition in PNG.43

Traditional Highland village housing at ‘first contact’ Architecture in the New Guinea Highlands was based on a language group system, with each language group divided into tribes of about two to three hundred people, gathered in hamlets of between five and forty houses, in no specific formation,44 which Williams likened to ‘primitive garden cities’ consisting of scattered homesteads with fenced gardens interspersed with groves of trees.45 Houses were generally located in defensively strategic positions with a good view of the surrounding area.46 Each house was occupied

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by a single family except those houses where men slept and spent most time in shared accommodation, from which women were excluded. Sleeping was on a raised platform covered with woven mats and cooking was generally done indoors.47 House form varied from round thatched huts to gable-roofed structures constructed entirely from materials gathered from the surrounding bush.48 Design responded to the elements which the house needed to withstand49 – cold evenings and persistent rainfall.

Contemporary structures, Kunguma Notwithstanding the generally accepted view of round houses as typical Highlands’ housing, a range of forms existed historically and are still in use.50 Round, rectangular, rectangular with apsidal ends and long houses are all constructed using a combination of traditional and/or non-traditional materials. More recently hexagonal houses and those with entry porches have been constructed. Many factors determine where a house should be built. It should be a socially meaningful and identifiable space, the use of which will not cause disputes within the community. Prior to the construction of a new building, elders of the village collectively agree on the location’s suitability and supervise the work of gathering and preparing the building materials. Building is a collective activity that ties the community together and is part of the traditional cultural system known in the Mt Hagen area as ‘moka’, a complex system of exchange described in detail by anthropologists in the Highlands area.51 In its simplest form it is an exchange of gifts and services between kin and close associates or friends. The acceptance of any such gifts implies a moral reciprocal obligation either immediately or at a future date. The system extends to property, food, time invested in community activities and potential future caring of the elderly or infirm. Each gift or service is remembered and counted at appropriate times such as bride price ceremonies and funerals.52 Housing typology does not appear to have changed significantly when compared to earlier studies; however, there is evidence of gradual change in recent times in both function and form, led by a younger generation returning to village life after studying, living and working in the city. Their lifestyles have changed and, for the people interviewed, the desire to ‘move along with modern civilization’ means that people feel comfortable about making individual choices for housing, whether traditional or ‘semi-modern’. Most houses continue to be built on a compacted earth floor with a scattering of dry grass or banana leaves on top, although modern iterations now include concrete slab floors or houses raised on stumps. A central hearth dominates not only the main family house, but also the separate kitchen (haus kuk) and any additional women’s houses (family house of one or more co-wives and their children). Husbands move freely between the various spaces and, if co-wives ‘get along’, all wives share the chores and eat together in the haus kuk at mealtime. Open fires, ringed with stones or enclosed with found objects like old drums, are kept burning continuously while houses are occupied. The smoke from these fires rises to the roof and seeps out through the thatch. Most hearths are built in the centre of the house because this is the best way to evenly distribute the heat and because the construction materials are highly flammable. There is often a suspended slatted timber frame over the fire that prevents the rise of embers while also providing a place to keep firewood dry. Used for warmth, cooking and as a focus for family life, it is a private intimate place within the enclosure of home. In relationships which include co-wives, the family eats together in the haus kuk although generally each wife has her own separate house to retire to at night. All but three of the 119 Highlands households surveyed had a separate haus kuk. Water is generally carried from a nearby stream or river, or in some cases home-made irrigation systems using bamboo piping. Some houses with metal-clad roofing have water tanks or small drums in which to

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collect rainwater for both cooking and bathing, but these are still uncommon at Kunguma which is largely reliant on an informal subsistence economy. Houses in rural villages such as Kunguma have a widely dispersed, organic settlement pattern suited to the intense emphasis on gardening and pig production for subsistence living, wealth accumulation and/or prestige. The dispersed settlement patterns at ‘first contact’ are similar in nature to those at Kunguma in recent times (Figure 9.3). The gathering of materials for a new house is a community effort that starts with the family unit. The younger men contribute most of the physical labour, collecting timber and vines from the rainforest within a radius of five to ten kilometres, and cutting the pitpit (Miscanthus floridulus) for weaving walls and the kunai (Imperata cylindrica) for thatching. Although responsibility for building a house largely falls to the men, women assist with collection of kunai, providing sustenance and contributing to the cash required for nails or other purchased goods. They do this by growing extra produce to sell at the local markets. Evidence from this research in Kunguma shows that modernization is inevitable in rural areas, just as it is in towns and cities. As previously noted, ownership is subject to an inclusive conception of property and

Fig. 9.3  Study area: Kunguma village with ‘singsing’ ground, the cultural hub of the village, in the centre, 2016 (by author; drone pilot Richard Stegman).

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dependent to some extent on the continued exchange relationships associated with working the land and its production. There are no official individual land titles, government controls or building regulations applicable in Kunguma. Self-help, staged housing using largely bush-sourced materials and collective action is still the norm. Nevertheless, for returning countrymen, housing in traditional villages is a means of social mobility when access to customary land is relatively secure for those with the prerequisite kin-connections and when they have the financial capacity established in the city to build what they want. The younger generation have been away to the cities for schooling and consequently, when they return, they want what they have been exposed to and grown accustomed to while away. Despite acknowledgement that metal-clad, modern (kapa) houses are too hot and uncomfortable during the day, and too cold at night, they are considered longer lasting against the elements, and are associated with cleanliness, especially if placed on a concrete slab or slightly raised on stumps. Being elevated on stumps also has a level of status attached. As one respondent said, ‘But in the future, I think I might have visitors. I need to have a septic in the house and probably a shower – everything – a sink and dishes and more like kitchen. Something different. Me, as a leader, I would like to live off the ground.’

Case study 2: Coastal Central Province Tubusereia village, Central Province Tubusereia village is located on the southern coast of PNG; one of the earliest areas of colonial contact. It is part of Central Province which surrounds the National Capital District, the seat of government and the country’s capital, Port Moresby, and stretches from Bereina in the north to Gaire in the south, extending inland to the Owen Stanley Mountain Range. It has an area of 29,998 square kilometres and, in the 2011 census, a population of 237,016.53 Much of the population relies on Port Moresby for work in government or business, or informal trade in fruit, vegetables, fish and betel nut. The terrain around Port Moresby, situated between the catchment of the Vanapa and Brown Rivers, ranges from hill slopes approximately 200 metres above sea level, to valleys, beaches and mangrove swamps.54 Tubusereia is connected to Port Moresby by the Magi Highway which extends to the southeast as far as Kupiano. While Tubusereia is only about seventeen kilometres southeast of Port Moresby on Bootless Bay in a direct line, it is on the other side of the bay, hence the topography means a road journey of about eighty kilometres. The Magi Highway from Port Moresby is sealed as far as the turnoff to Tubusereia, after which it is unsealed and subject to flooding during the rainy season. It is a common occurrence for vehicles to be bogged at these times. One of several coastal villages built over the sea, Tubusereia consists of about 600 households built on tall piles driven into the seabed,55 reminiscent of the original village houses first encountered by Europeans. Peterkin noted that in 1961,56 Tubusereia was almost entirely out over the water with only a few houses and the village church on the foreshore. In contrast, Oram reported that by 1966 there were no traditional houses left at Hula village further along the coast to the south-east, and that half the village was land based.57 The trajectory has continued for Hula and several other coastal villages so that very few, if any, houses are now built over the sea in those areas, making Tubusereia one of the few remaining examples of pile-house settlements built over the sea.

Traditional South Coast village housing At the onset of colonization, historical information indicates that the Motu people living along the southern coast, which included Tubusereia, often built their houses on stilts in the sea, arranged in pairs of lines called

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‘iduhu’ that radiated out from the shore, to guard against surprise attacks from inland tribes.58 The largest villages rarely had more than one thousand inhabitants. ‘Short wooden pile jetties extended over the water with five or six dwelling units on either side. Each cluster houses a patrilineal kinship group.’59 Belshaw described the houses as practical and commodious,60 rectangular in plan with a straight gable roof and a front verandah. Although the basis of the iduhu was by patrilineal descent, if there was sufficient reason, a new branch could be established. Any extensions to the line were made further seaward, or a new line established parallel to the existing one. Spatially and physically expansion could not take place between two lines. A decline in lineage membership on the other hand meant a break in the line, and the house would decay. Space in the iduhu was allocated, so that senior members of a patrilineal kinship group came to occupy the house closest to the shore. Traditional houses had a hearth in the centre. Placed on the floorboards, it was made of split banana trunks covered with clay and was considered a sacred space. The last house with a central hearth was at another Motuan village, Pari, and was thought to have been replaced in about 1966.61

Contemporary structures, Tubusereia Most coastal housing continues to be built on stilts, said to be more suited to the warm climate and the Motuan lifestyle. The extended family sleeps inside the home, but the place for socializing is the verandah. Traditionally Motu houses had a front verandah, observed to still be common practice during this study. It is a cool, shaded space from which to listen to the sounds of village life and keep abreast of what is going on in the village community. The verandah is associated with being visible and public, whereas going inside the house is moving to invisible and private space. Thus, the verandah has remained a quintessential feature of coastal housing. It seemed to the authors that for the participants ‘traditional’ meant housing that was linked to the social function within the village setting rather than any specific materiality. From a social perspective, although there was little evidence of traditional materials being used in building, narrative and observational data indicate that the way of life, and thus the spatial characteristics, of houses draws on traditional values. In traditional urban villages such as Tubusereia, unlike informal settlements, houses are constructed on sites determined by inheritance and negotiation. While services are lacking, there is some security of tenure arising from occupation of their traditional land. During field trips in 2016 and 2017, only two traditional builders were known to live in the village. When questioned about the reasons for people moving away from traditional building, generally it seemed to be the ‘excitement of [what white men] had; colonialism’ rather than a rejection of social values. Participants who were old enough to remember living in a traditional house said, in retrospect, they personally preferred the ambience of them, noting ‘that type of house is nice and cool inside’. At Tubusereia, almost all the households surveyed (20) and those casually observed, cooked outside with wood-fired facilities of some kind, usually a cut-down, 44-gallon drum. Although some homes have kitchens inside, the preference was to cook outside on the verandah or in an extra lean-to, using a wood fire. Several respondents said that in addition to saving on electricity or gas, they preferred the taste of food cooked over the fire. In the absence of any available traditional materials, skills or even desire to return to traditional housing, most buildings were constructed from scavenged materials or those bought from a reputable supplier, usually employing a relative or village connection (wantok). There were no formal plans or contracts, and there were no building regulations for construction on customary land. It was up to the builder, someone from the village or someone related to the owner, to recommend the required material, sizes and quality,

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based on trust and communal support. In many ways, despite the unofficial and undocumented nature of the arrangement, it is akin to a contract. As one villager noted, ‘that’s just how things are done in PNG’. As a stimulus for visual discourse, village leader Felix Daroa was shown photographs taken in the 1960s for context regarding changes in Tubusereia housing and village layout, and specifically a comparison of what people feel comfortable with, in the contemporary setting. Considerable beach erosion was noted, with the opinion from respondents that corrugated roofing was responsible because it was phased in without provision for downpipes, water tanks or any form of stormwater drainage infrastructure. In recent times, NGOs have also sought to provide water tanks to mitigate the effects that lack of clean water has on health within the community. Larger houses were said to be more desirable now, compared to the size of older traditional houses, with many of the respondents indicating that the size of the house was more important than access to better facilities, perhaps a visible demonstration of status and the need to accommodate the flux of family life; sometimes children stay with grandparents for up to four months while their parents go away for work. Field observation noted several substantial homes in prominent positions in various stages of completion. It was not unusual for homes to take several years to build as funds become available, but as there were no legal administrative controls in place it was also possible for the owners to occupy the houses regardless of the state of completion. The absence of running water, rubbish collection or an effective sewerage system was immediately evident in Tubusereia. Most houses had electricity, but the supply was unreliable and intermittent. Several participants who indicated sadness at the loss of traditional knowledge and building skills agreed amongst themselves that a hybrid model that incorporated ‘the best of both worlds’ was the future aspiration. Many houses in the coastal case study region are now land based. Tubusereia village is spread out over a large area with houses dotted randomly across the landscape as well as out into the sea (Figure 9.4). Most houses are constructed using non-traditional materials yet retain many of the features considered to be traditional. PNG is a land of many contrasts and yet there are common threads that address the dynamics of activity and the social constraints that determine how housing requirements change and are adapted. What is clear at Tubusereia is the social demarcation between villagers living over the sea and those on land. Marine-based houses are tightly grouped, with little room for expansion and seemingly few options to move on to the land.62 Individual dwellings are densely positioned along walkway lines, having no real space to expand. These walkways can be viewed as an indication of the continuity of traditional architecture, at least in terms of function, although strictly speaking these physical connections are a relatively recent tradition, established as a result of the declining use of canoes as the main mode of transportation and social movement. Families living in marine-based houses regularly repair the walkways or replace house stumps using similar methods passed down through generations, including harvesting timber stumps from the rapidly declining mangrove stocks. Land-based residential buildings by contrast have a reasonably dispersed settlement pattern, corresponding to the entitlement, generally through patrilineal descent, of those who moved onto the land several generations ago. It should be noted that when houses are closer to the sea, and the associated centre of social activity, the more densely grouped they become. In this sense the settlement pattern at Tubusereia is little different to urbanization elsewhere in the region (Figure 9.5). Field interviews indicated some resentment from marine dwellers about being dispossessed; most do not appear to have land tenure despite being able to trace familial lines to pre-colonial times. It is often the case that land is claimed according to word of mouth (oral tradition). Landmarks are placed to lay claim and only adjusted if there is dissent, or ‘grumbles’ as they are referred to.

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Fig. 9.4  Tubusereia central meeting area and village church, 2016 (by author; drone pilot Bernard Bouraga).

Fig. 9.5  Example of high marine-based housing density, with walkway repairs being undertaken at Tubusereia, 2016 (by author).

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Tubusereia is very much dependent on the money economy, with several villagers commuting to Port Moresby for work. The choice to remain living in the village is both social and economic. Even with a regular salary, rents are said to be unaffordable in town and purchasing a house is out of the question for many. However, it is the social aspect that seems to be the more influential, a fact that has not changed since the 1979 Stretton report on urban housing policy.63 Several respondents work in Port Moresby, primarily in the public service or finance sectors, and are provided with housing in the city, yet on weekends they choose to return to the village. One of the suggested reasons is to ensure their claim to customary land continues for future generations. Building a house in the village is one way of confirming such claims for those who have an income or the ability to borrow money. More importantly it indicates that extended cultural lineage and its attendant web of social relationships is the norm that permeates both traditional and emerging lifestyles and exerts a high degree of impact on both the social and built environments. Evidence from this study in Tubusereia shows that in the transition to urbanization, housing is a means of social mobility, particularly when customary land tenure seems secure.

Case comparisons Specific aspects of traditional architecture in modern PNG When defining traditional architecture in contemporary PNG, several common themes emerged that related directly to what constitutes a traditional home in the opinion of the participants. Whether a house is regarded as traditional or not is intimately linked to its social function and emplacement within the traditional landscape of village or village-like settlement. While Kunguma and Tubusereia are divergent in terms of their architectural forms, within each community there is relative consistency. In Tubusereia, more recent homes emulate the pile-based marine houses that are still in use. Preference is for larger, shared houses on stumps, built as high as possible on land, so that the underneath of the house can be used, but also to take advantage of the breezes and views. Houses need to be large to accommodate an extended family lifestyle. Conversely, at Kunguma the norm is to build low-set separate houses for extended families, close by or within a loosely defined family compound. This is particularly evident in polygamous marriages which are still common in the Highlands. The ideal modern home in both villages should be able to accommodate the needs of extended family, no matter how long they intend to stay. In both study areas the transition from traditional to modern was observed to be an incremental process. Initially a home may be small and fragile, but in most cases the size and standard of construction improve with time. Building materials are obtained as funds become available, sometimes spanning several years. This leads to an eclectic mix of design solutions for the short, medium and long terms that can easily accommodate the shifting needs of dynamic families. Colonial laissez-faire policies, regardless of whether due to Australian budgetary restraint or because PNG was merely a buffer from other ‘geo-political threats’ as previously noted, mean that the people of PNG have always provided their own housing, in one way or another, within their means and their access to available materials. There seems to be a clear understanding that there is value in retaining traditional knowledge, and a need to respect the past, while acknowledging that there are also benefits to moving with the times, providing it is on their own terms. The concept of modernity can be defined in different ways. For Berman it is related to peoples’ sense of being modern.64 Yet modernity in developing countries can at times be identified according to Western values and consequently thought to engender a break with traditional values. Being modern in PNG, however, means grappling with the dilemma of how to balance obligations to family and community

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with the notion of individual autonomy. As this study shows, the concept of what constitutes a modern home is merely an emphasis on the use of industrially produced materials and imitation of styles from a variety of sources, while socio-cultural elements of housing remain essentially intact. The social status of owners of modern houses increases, but exists in concert with traditional spatial, social, and cultural norms and values. One of the issues with undertaking an ethnographic study is that often people do not discuss what they think is self-evident in their daily lives and therefore it is important to move beyond self-representation, to insights about the value or meaning behind a common mode of living that is tacit within a community. At both field sites, people’s placemaking seemed to be intimately tied to the cultural and social values meaningful to them. Thus, at Kunguma, attention was paid to the importance of the setting not only because it was culturally significant but also for pragmatic reasons – fertile soil, space for gardens, proximity to water supply and position within tribal boundaries. At Tubusereia on the other hand, although space was equally important, it represented, more explicitly, ownership and prestige. Few people used the land productively, while those living over the sea rarely had access to land and needed to rely on the generosity of family when there was no money to buy food or pay school fees. Nonetheless, the attachment to the village and associated social bonds was strong. The interconnection between architecture, kinship ties and social practice was clear in the norms practised by the communities at large but it was evident that traditional values and the desire for modern houses were not necessarily mutually exclusive in PNG.

Conclusion Comparing two culturally different field areas has shown that customary or traditional architectural practices are not immutable nor unchanging. At Kunguma, traditional housing has not been abandoned, but many contemporary ideas have been incorporated. At the same time, arguably due to longer colonial contact, most people at Tubusereia now build and live in more permanent non-traditional buildings. Consequently, both can be described as contemporary Indigenous forms in a generative sense, with respect for their traditional links and the contemporary world in which they are entwined. Typically, a new house whether traditional or contemporary, Highland or Coastal, is positioned in relation to kinship ties and with the agreement of a lineage group. These ties are an indication of the complications and contradictions between visible construction processes and invisible social values, still steeped in the past, while being drawn inexorably into the present. Writings by Semper suggest buildings and textiles are interrelated as human arts, with knots as a fundamental principle of coherence.65 As a structural configuration they join disparate elements into a coherent whole; as a symbolic configuration they can represent the ties of kinship and social cohesion. At both Tubusereia and Kunguma the importance of the ties that bind extended families dictates housing socio-spatial patterns. In the absence of any government support, the family unit is the most significant provider. People identify with family first, then tribe, then province and finally as Papua New Guinean. Similarly, the value placed on outdoor space continues in villages. A central open space remains the most common aspect of PNG villages and settlements. In the Highlands this is usually the ceremonial singsing ground, while in Tubusereia and other coastal villages there is the beach or a centrally located shady tree adjacent to the main thoroughfare, under which most meetings and selling of buai (betel nut) or other goods take place. Observation for this research showed little physical evidence of boundaries, fences and the like, yet people knew and understood the significance of certain spaces, the non-physical barriers and the paths

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and nodes for meeting and passing through. Community structures are typically unseen when considering the intervention of housing provision, yet these spaces describe what is meaningful in a specific built environment. Nevertheless, through a process of natural change, as Telban suggested, rural migrants to towns, and those who were born there, developed their own practices of placemaking, social organization and sense of belonging.66 At a fundamental level this is in keeping with Shils who contends that the linking of historical aspects of a society, transmitted via a sequential temporal pattern, brings the past into the present.67 Taking into account the temporal aspects allows for small incremental modifications, to the extent that they are not seen as significantly different from traditional ways. This is evident for example at Kunguma where woven walls are seen as traditional because they have become the norm during the living memory of the people concerned, whereas older villagers recall a time fifty years earlier, when bark was the norm. Thus, the outcomes of housing transformations reflect changes in circumstances, in most instances initiated by the owner’s needs, desires and economic security. Assumptions about tradition should not be accepted without question, however. Localized claims on traditions of the past have, in some cases, been recreated for the present, to meet current economic and political agendas. Custom and customary land ownership in PNG are constitutionally recognized, integrated and continue to be strongly practised through customary lineage systems, leading to discontent from those who are at the periphery, and hegemony by those at the centre. Recent trends indicate that there is a dissipation of village connectedness, the longer migrants remain away from their villages, inter-marry or work in different orbits. Villages such as Tubusereia which were once homogeneous are no longer so. As pointed out in interviews with participants, the upcoming generation want the benefits of kin-networks but no longer the obligation and constraints of reciprocity. An emerging new elite, schooled in the processes of global development rhetoric, indicates that in some cases, identity based on place and belonging is in direct conflict with place as a tradeable commodity to create wealth for a few. Nevertheless, this study shows that traditional knowledge at the village level, passed down from generation to generation, fulfils the changing needs of each emerging generation, contributing to a sense of continuity and belonging; the world is constantly changing, and villagers know they must change with it.

Notes 1. Paul Jones, The Emergence of Pacific Urban Villages: Urbanization Trends in the Pacific (Manila, Philippines: Asia Development Bank Publishing, 2016). 2. Mark Busse, ‘Epilogue: Anxieties about Culture and Tradition – Property as Reification’, International Journal of Cultural Property 16, (2009): 358, doi.org/10.1017/S0940739109990178. 3. Edward Shils, ‘Tradition’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 13, no. 2 (1971): 126. 4. C. Tilley, ‘Identity, Place, Landscape and Heritage’, Journal of Material Culture 11, no. 1/2 (2006), doi. org/10.1177/1359183506062990. 5. Howard Davis, The Culture of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 6. Richard Scaglion, ‘Multiple Voices, Multiple Truths: Labour Recruitment in the Sepik Foothills of German New Guinea’, The Journal of Pacific History 42, no. 3 (2007), dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223340701692064. 7. Jones, The Emergence of Pacific Urban Villages: Urbanization Trends in the Pacific Islands; P. Jones, The State of Pacific Towns and Cities (Manila, Philippines: ADB Publishing, 2012); P. Jones, ‘Searching for a Little Bit of Utopia – Understanding the Growth of Squatter and Informal Settlements in Pacific Towns and Cities’, Australian Planner 49, no. 4 (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07293682.2011.626565.

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8. Lepani Karigawa, Jacob Adejare Babarinde and Suman Steven Holis, ‘Sustainability of Land Groups in Papua New Guinea’, Land 5, no. 14 (2016). 9. Paul Sillitoe, ‘Beating the Boundaries: Land Tenure and Identity in the Papua New Guinea Highlands’, Journal of Anthropological Research 55, no. 3 (1999): 340. 10. Herbert Ian Hogbin and Peter Lawrence, Studies in New Guinea Land Tenure (Sydney, NSW: Sydney University Press, 1967); John Burton, ‘Determinacy of Groups and the “Owned Commons” in Papua New Guinea and Torres Strait’, in Customary Land Tenure and Registration in Australia and Papua New Guinea: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. James Weiner and Katie Glaskin (Canberra: ANU Press, 2007), 175; Colin Filer, ‘Local Custom and the Art of Land Group Boundary Maintenance in Papua New Guinea’, Customary Land Tenure and Registration in Australia and Papua New Guinea, 136. 11. Burton, ‘Determinacy of Groups and the “Owned Commons” in Papua New Guinea and Torres Strait’, Customary Land Tenure, 195. 12. John Connell, ‘Elephants in the Pacific? Pacific Urbanisation and Its Discontents’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint 52, no. 2 (2011): 129. 13. Charles Dunford Rowley, The New Guinea Villager (Melbourne, Australia: Cheshire Publishing Pty Ltd, 1972), 8. 14. Busse, ‘Epilogue: Anxieties About Culture and Tradition – Property as Reification’, 359. 15. Michael Goddard, Unseen City: Anthropological Perspectives on Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (Canberra, Australia: Pandanus Books, 2005); Emmanuel Mungu, ‘The Reality of the Housing Situation in PNG’, NRI Commentary, 7 July 2014, https://pngnri.org/the-reality-of-the-housing-situation-in-png/. Paul Jones, The Emergence of Pacific Urban Villages: Urbanization Trends in the Pacific Islands (Manila, Philippines: ADB Publishing, 2016); ‘GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities’, United Nations Environment, 2019, accessed 28 June 2019, https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/sustainable-development-goals/ why-do-sustainable-development-goals-matter/goal-11. 16. Amos Rapoport, Human Aspects of Urban Form: Towards a Man-Environment Approach to Urban Form and Design vol. 15, Urban and Regional Planning Series (Oxford: Pergamon Press Ltd, 1977), 16. 17. Wayne Warry, Chuave Politics: Changing Patterns of Leadership in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (Canberra: Australian National University, 1987), Monograph. 18. Rosemarie Rusch, ‘Woven Walls Threaded Horizons: Traditional Architecture in the Modern Urban Fabric of Papua New Guinea’ (Bond University, 2020). 19. Davis, The Culture of Building, 10. 20. CartoGIS Services, ‘Papua New Guinea Regional Map Cap 18–258b Kp’, (Canberra, ACT: ANU, 2016). Used under CC BY-SA 4.0. 21. PNG Government, ‘United Nations Country Programme Papua New Guinea 2008–2012’, in A Partnership for Nation Building, ed. United Nations in Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby: United Nations Development System, 2007). 22. W.G. Lawes, ‘Notes on New Guinea and Its Inhabitants’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography 2, no. 10 (1880). 23. Stuart Doran, Full Circle: Australia and Papua New Guinea 1883–1970, ed. DFAT, Australia in the World (Canberra: Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2007). Historical Monograph. Australia and Papua New Guinea 1966–1969, ed. Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, (Canberra: WHH Publishing, 2006). B. Jinks, P. Biskup and H. Nelson, Readings in New Guinea History (Sydney: Angus and Robertson Pty Ltd, 1973). 24. F.E. Williams, The Natives of the Purari Delta Anthropology Report (Port Moresby: Territory of Papua: Government Printer, 1924).

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25. Alan Stretton, ‘Urban Housing Policy in Papua New Guinea’, in Monograph, ed. J.D. Conroy (Boroko, Papua New Guinea: The Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research, 1979). 26. J.V. Langmore and N.D. Oram, ‘Port Moresby Urban Development’, (Port Moresby, PNG1970); N.D. Oram, Colonial Town to Melanesian City: Port Moresby 1884–1974 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1976); ‘Health, Housing and Urban Development’, PNG Medical Journal 8, no. 4 (1965). 27. A.C. Haddon, The Practical Value of Ethnology (London: Watts & Co, 1921), Conway Memorial Lecture; Alfred C. Haddon, ‘Studies in the Anthropogeography of British New Guinea’, The Geographical Journal 16, no. 3 (1900); Richard F. Salisbury, Vunamami: Economic Transformation in a Traditional Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970). 28. C.G. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (2010; London: Cambridge University Press, 1910), https://archive.org/details/melanesiansofbri00seli; B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, Project Gutenberg Edition (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1922); Williams, The Natives of the Purari Delta; F.E. Williams, ‘The Natives of Mount Hagen, Papua: Further Notes’, Man 37, no. 114 (1937). 29. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea. E.W. Pearson Chinnery, ‘Natives of the Waria, Williams and Bialolo Watersheds’, in Territory of New Guinea Anthropological Report (Canberra: Government Printer, 1934); Williams, The Natives of the Purari Delta; Williams, ‘The Natives of Mount Hagen, Papua: Further Notes’; William Ross, ‘Ethnological Notes on Mt. Hagen Tribes (Mandated Territory of New Guinea). With Special Reference to the Tribe Called Mogei’, Anthropos 31, no. 3/4 (1936). 30. Robert F. Maher, New Men of Papua (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), Anthropology. 31. ANGAU: The Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit of the Territory of Papua and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea was a civil administration formed on 21 March 1942 during the Second World War. The civil administration of both Papua and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea were replaced by an Australian Army military government and came under the control of ANGAU from February 1942 until the end of the Second World War. 32. Oram, ‘Health, Housing and Urban Development’.; Hal B. Levine and Marlene Wolfzahn Levine, Urbanization in Papua New Guinea: A Study of Ambivalent Townsmen, ed. Kenneth Little, Urbanization in Developing Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 33. Doran, Australia and Papua New Guinea 1966–1969. 34. PNG Department of Public Works, Experimental Low Cost Housing (Port Moresby: Territory of Papua New Guinea Department of Public Works Architectural Building Research Station, 1968), illustrations, plans, tables; Judy Vulker et al., (eds.), Australian Architects (Australia: RAIA Education Division, 1990). 35. Jinks, Biskup, and Nelson, Readings in New Guinea History; Doran, Full Circle: Australia and Papua New Guinea 1883–1970. 36. Australia and Papua New Guinea 1966–1969, 769. 37. National Statistical Office Papua New Guinea, ‘Censuses National Reports 2011’, National Statistical Office. 38. National Research Institute, ‘Papua New Guinea District and Provincial Profiles’, (Boroko, Papua New Guinea 2010); National Statistical Office Papua New Guinea, ‘Censuses National Reports 2011’. 39. Joseph Ketan, ‘Political Governance and Service Delivery in Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea’, State Society and Governance in Melanesia 2013, no. 9 (2013); Tim Denham, ‘Traim Tasol: Cultural Heritage Management in Papua New Guinea’, in Transcending the Culture Nature Divide in Cultural Heritage: Views from the Asia Pacific Region, ed. Sally Brockwell, Sue Connor and Denis Byrne (Canberra: ANU Press, 2013); John Muke, Tim Denham and Vagi Genorupa, ‘Nominating and Managing a World Heritage Site in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea’, World Archaeology 39, no. 3 (2007). 40. Jack Golson et al., (eds.), Ten Thousand Years of Cultivation at Kuk Swamp in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Canberra, Australia: ANU Press, 2017), 330.

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41. Lampert, R.J. 1973. Unpublished paper presented at 45th ANZAAS Congress, Perth. Kuk archive, Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Australian National University, Canberra. 42. Andrew Strathern and Pamela Stewart, ‘Hagen Settlement Histories: Dispersals and Consolidations’, in Ten Thousand Years of Cultivation at Kuk Swamp in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, ed. Jack Golson, et al. (Canberra: ANU Press, 2017), 427. 43. Joseph Ketan, Political Competition and State-Society Relations in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea vol. 2013 (Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 2004), Discussion Paper,. Rosita Henry, ‘Being and Belonging: Exchange, Value, and Land Ownership in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea’, in Possession and Ownership: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, ed. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013). 44. Ross, ‘Ethnological Notes on Mt. Hagen Tribes (Mandated Territory of New Guinea)’. 45. Williams, ‘The Natives of Mount Hagen, Papua: Further Notes’, 90. 46. Janet Grey, Chuave Housing: A Study of Kabikom Village (Boroko, Papua New Guinea: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, 1979); R. Feachem, ‘Environment and Health in a New Guinea Highlands Community’ (University of New South Wales, 1973), 34. 47. Chinnery, ‘Natives of the Waria, Williams and Bialolo Watersheds’.; Williams, ‘The Natives of Mount Hagen, Papua: Further Notes’. 48. William C. Clarke, Place and People: An Ecology of a New Guinean Community (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1971). 49. Williams, ‘The Natives of Mount Hagen, Papua: Further Notes’.; Loupis, ‘Traditional Architecture of the Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea’. 50. Clarke, Place and People: An Ecology of a New Guinean Community. 51. See, for example, Richard F. Salisbury, ‘Economic Change among the Siane Tribes of New Guinea’ (Anthropology, Australian National University, 1957). Susan Bulmer and Ralph Bulmer, ‘The Prehistory of the Australian New Guinea Highlands’, American Anthropologist 66, no. 4 (1964). Andrew Strathern, The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen New Guinea Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). 52. Rosita Henry (ed.), A True Child of Papua New Guinea: Memoir of a Life between Two Worlds (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co Inc, 2019). 53. National Statistical Office Papua New Guinea, ‘Censuses National Reports 2011’; National Research Institute, ‘Papua New Guinea District and Provincial Profiles’. 54. Regina Kiele et  al., ‘Port Moresby Papua New Guinea Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment’, in Cities and Climate Change Initiative, ed. Peter Grant (Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlement Program (UN-Habitat), 2013). 55. National Statistical Office Papua New Guinea, ‘Censuses National Reports 2011’. 56. Les Peterkin, Papua New Guinea Part 9 Tubusereia (YouTube: Les Peterkin, 2019). 57. N.D. Oram, ‘Social and Economic Relationships in a Port Moresby Canoe Settlement’, (Port Moresby, PNG 1967). 58. J.H.P. Murray, Papua or British New Guinea, (2012; London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912), http://gutenberg.net.au/ ebooks12/1202531h.html. 59. Paul Oliver (ed.), Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World 3 vols., vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1186. 60. Cyril Belshaw, The Great Village: The Economic and Social Welfare of Hanuabada, an Urban Community in Papua (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957). 61. Ian Maddocks, ‘Living Over the Water: The Use of Space in Pari Village, Papua’, in Australian National University Seminar (Canberra: Australian National University, 1976).

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62. John Connell and Meg Keen, ‘Urban Transformations: From Marginal to Resilient Melanesian Cities’, in Pacific Reflections: Personal Perceptions of Aid and Development, ed. Pamela Thomas (Canberra: Development Studies Network ANU, 2018). 63. Stretton, ‘Urban Housing Policy in Papua New Guinea’, 53, 67. 64. Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (London, UK: Verso Books, 2010). 65. Gottfried Semper, ‘The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings’, in RES Monographs in Anthropology and Aesthetics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 66. Borut Telban, ‘Places and Paths in Melanesian Landscapes’, in The Melanesian World, ed. E. Hirsch and W. Rollason (London: Routledge, 2019). 67. Shils, ‘Tradition’, 24.

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172

Part 3  Bridging for diasporic peoples

174

10  Archipelagic views: Vernacular transformation and

inter-colonial agricultural trade networks in the late nineteenth-century Asia Pacific

  AMANDA ACHMADI, KAREN BURNS AND PAUL WALKER

Introduction The expansion of European colonies in the Asia Pacific region through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was driven primarily by profitable cultivation of tropical produce which was then traded across the globe. Through this process, the establishment of colonial plantation estates and the expansion of inter-colonial colonial trade and shipping networks opened up the region whilst bringing into view the diverse vernacular architectural landscapes of the plantation regions. Vernacular built forms were not only featured as part of the remote regional setting of colonial plantation estates. They also provided pioneering European plantation operators with readily available bodies of knowledge of how to build, with readily available building materials, and with craftmanship. This knowledge facilitated plantation operations as well as the sheltering and housing of workers and managerial staff. Competing European imperial visions carved the region into multiple political boundaries and distinct colonial identities across an already dispersed region. However, the intensification of resource extraction and trade across borders also instigated a fluid movement of labour, goods and ideas about living in the tropics. This chapter seeks to expand the exploration of the vernacular architectural history of the Asia Pacific region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Firstly, it foregrounds the formation of intraAsia Pacific colonial agricultural trade connectivity and labour movement in the region. These activities were formed in cross-cultural encounters with vernacular landscapes. Secondly, the chapter considers the transformation and adaptation of vernacular built forms in major plantation estates and agricultural sites. It will focus on the emergence of a particular dwelling type which had accompanied the expansion of sugar, tobacco and copra plantations in different colonial contexts in this region. Our sites are Eastern Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies, New Guinea in the South Pacific and North Queensland in Australia. Similarities of dwelling forms emerging in these dispersed locations are rarely discussed in relation to each other. This chapter speculates on the archipelagic transmission of architectural forms as a facet of the colonial architectural history of the Asia Pacific region.

On the trail of agricultural commodities: Connectivity and inter-colonial movements in late nineteenth-century Asia Pacific In the late nineteenth century, two shipping companies had overlapping operations across Australia and the Asia Pacific region. The Royal Packet Navigation Company of the Netherlands (Koninklijke PaketvaartMaatschappij or KPM), established in Batavia in 1888, connected multiple sea ports scattered across the

Dutch East Indies territory, with key regional ports in mainland Southeast Asia, East Asia, British India and South Africa. At its peak, it operated branch offices in Batavia, Semarang, Singapore and Sydney. Shipping, travel agency and a network of hotels were its core businesses.1 The other major shipping company, Burns, Philp & Co, Limited, was incorporated in Sydney in 1883. It was based on the Queensland business undertakings of James Burns which dated back to the 1860s.2 Burns Philp operated an extensive inter-island service through the South Pacific. This service connected Oceania’s major plantation and trading centres with all major ports of Australia as well as operating across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand’s major ports. In the early twentieth century the operations of the two companies were connected, enabling movement of labour, goods and travellers across the archipelagic region (Figure 10.1).3 Their respective networks continued to facilitate such movement when they became rivals with KPM’s establishment in 1908 of a steamer route serving Australia’s east coast cities and Southeast Asia. Burns Philp operated two branch offices in the Dutch East Indies, located in the major port cities of Semarang and Surabaya on the island of Java. These were established in 1908 and 1913, respectively.4 Burns Philp also expanded its interests in export-oriented plantations beyond its South Pacific copra operations by managing a kapok plantation in East Java. Kapok was an important commodity for export back to Australia. At its peak, Burns Philp’s operations encompassed export copra and cotton plantations in the South Pacific, investment in the pearling industry in northern Australia and the eastern Indonesian island of Aru, and an expansive network of general stores, hotels and travel agencies across the Oceania

Fig. 10.1  KPM’s principal trade routes c. 1919 incorporating services across South Pacific run by Burns, Philp & Co, Limited. Source: Burns, Philp & Co.

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region. It also offered tourist cruises to the South Pacific and Southeast Asian destinations departing from all eastern ports of Australia.5 The combined shipping itineraries of KPM and Burns Philp illustrate a dense network of connectivity between multiple sea ports across Australasia and the archipelagic region of the Dutch East Indies, far surpassing the present-day international flight connections through a handful of gateways such as Singapore, Denpasar and Sydney. Both companies published detailed illustrated guides for Australian readers, promoting travel and commercial opportunities across the territories they served. Key urban settlements and plantation estates across Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, East Asia, Australia and New Zealand were depicted as sites – to quote KPM’s Isles of the East (1912) – of ‘exceptional commercial opportunities’ as well as places to be touristically discovered through their shipping networks.6 In both KPM and Burns Philp publications, Java in particular was promoted. In addition to these business networks and infrastructure, inter-colonial exhibitions across the region offered opportunities for commodity display and cultural exchange. Architectural models, drawings, photographs and replica historical pavilions were a feature of the exhibition type developed from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Burns Philp participated in the Semarang Trade Fair in 1925 but the city had a longer exhibition tradition with Semarang hosting an International Colonial Exhibition in 1914 designed by Henri Maclaine Pont and assisted by Thomas Karsten, two influential architects in the colony. The 1914 Semarang exhibition specifically focused on trades of agricultural products and featured international representation of Japan, India, China, Formosa and Australia with official exhibits from New South Wales and Western Australia. The display included a sugar industry pavilion and a model of a sugar factory, and around fifty other pavilions with distinctive architectural designs including an extensively elaborated ‘native section’. This section featured a reconstructed ‘native Javanese village’, a ‘working village’ and a variety of the elevated timber dwelling typology found across the Dutch East Indies.7 Joost Coté has noted that, although the exhibition was ‘[c]onceptually derived from the great international exhibitions in Europe, [it was] more directly modelled on the colonial exhibitions in Britain’s Asian colonies, India and Australia’, which suggests the extent of inter-colonial contacts within the Asia Pacific region at the time.8 Yulia Lukito has analysed the ‘hybrid’ Indigenous-colonial buildings staged at a suite of Dutch East Indies exhibitions, from Pasar Gambir (Gambir Fair) of Batavia (1931–2) to Jaarmarkt (Annual Fair) of Surabaya (designed 1925–30) by Cosman Citroen, J. H. Antonisse and B.J. Cramer, the latter two also involved in the design of Pasar Gambir.9 Before the development of historically themed pavilions, late nineteenth-century exhibitions in the Asia Pacific region organized exhibits through geographic taxonomies that highlighted local produce and customary art and architecture. The photographs of the 1881 Calcutta Exhibition document the Straits Settlements and Japanese courts and these images illustrate the importance of agricultural produce. The photographs also record large-scale physical models of traditional buildings.10 Later in the chapter we will discuss models presented at the1880 Melbourne International Exhibition. In their exhibition displays companies and colonial governments used exhibition sites to stage agricultural commodities but contextualized products within the sphere of culture. The establishment of such extensive shipping networks across the region also enabled the dynamic movement of workers between multiple colonial states and political entities. In his book, To the Islands: White Australians and the Malay Archipelago since 1788, Paul Battersby traces the extent of labour movement between the Malay archipelago (encompassing today’s Indonesia and the Philippines) and the northern region of Australia.11 In the 1870s, the northern pearling industry relied on the seamanship of ‘Malay’ labourers, the majority of whom originated from the Dutch East Indies’ islands of Java, Timor and the eastern Indonesian islands. This migration led to the establishment of kampong settlements in Thursday Island, Mulgrave Island and further south in Cairns. These were often referred to as ‘Malay towns’.12 In a more recent study on the pearling industry in Northern Australia, Julia Martínez and Adrian Vickers further explore

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the extent of social and cultural relations that emerged out of the movement of labour between eastern Indonesia and northern Australia as the pearling industry unfolded.13 They argue that the industry profoundly shaped the formation of societies in key production sites such as Broome, Darwin and the Torres Strait Islands in Australia and Aru Island in Indonesia. At its peak, the industry employed thousands of labourers from the Dutch East Indies and from as far afield as Japan, many of whom resided permanently in Australia following the end of the pearling industry and political unrest in the Dutch East Indies. Archaeologist and historian Campbell Macknight has traced an even older precolonial eighteenth-century contact between the Indigenous population of North Australia and Eastern Indonesia’s Makassar region of South Sulawesi, known for its maritime heritage, migrating tradition and Pinisi boatbuilding timber craftmanship.14 Another major industry that entailed labour movement between the Malay archipelago and Australia was the cane sugar plantation enterprise in Queensland.15 The main source of labour in the Queensland sugar industry was the islands of the western Pacific, from which 62,000 workers were recruited between 1871 and 1904. According to Clive Moore, these were ‘brought from more than eighty Melanesian, Polynesian outlier and Micronesian islands’, but predominantly from the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.16 But the use of indentured Melanesian labour in Queensland dates back to 1863, first employed on cotton farms.17 This trafficking in Islander labour also fed plantation economies in New Caledonia and Fiji. Following restrictions on the hiring of Kanaka (Pacific Island) labourers in 1885 – after years of ethnic and racial tension and anxiety about a white Australia – Queensland sugar plantations looked instead to recruit Malay labour. Battersby notes that in 1886, the Malay population in Northern Queensland increased from 300 to 1100. 18 In particular, the plantations sought experienced labourers from peninsular Malaya, where sugar plantations had been in operation since the 1830s. But most of the ‘Malay’ labourers in Queensland came from Java where Dutch colonial policy from the 1850s onwards encouraged large-scale plantation agriculture by requiring Indigenous land-owners to allocate 20 per cent of their landholdings to the raising of export crops, including sugar. While this policy ended in 1870, it had by then shifted the basis of agriculture from subsistence to large-scale cash cropping.19 Nahid Kabir’s study on the Javanese-Australian communities in the Queensland town of Mackay reveals this trans-colonial dynamic further by noting how early European planters in Queensland had travelled to Java, the main sugar producer in the region in mid-nineteenth century, and were involved with sugar growing and manufacturing there prior to setting up their own enterprises in Northern Queensland.20 Establishing their own industry, Australian sugar growers looked to the Indies industry for technical information and for reliable sugar cane varieties.21 As described in Peter Griggs’ study of the Australian sugar industry: ‘[i]n late 1887, Dr Gustav Kottman, CSR’s [Colonial Sugar Refining Company’s] inspecting chemist, travelled to Java and gathered information on Dutch sugar milling and cultivation practices.’22 Accustomed to the skill and experience of Javanese labourers and with knowledge of the familiarity of the Javanese with working in a hot and humid tropical climate, early Australian planters preferred Javanese labourers to others such as those from Ceylon and Melanesia. The increased movement of labourers from Java to Australia reached such a scale that the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies was prompted to impose emigration restrictions.23 Studies such as those of Moore, Kabir and Martínez and Vickers have demonstrated the significance of labour movement between Australia and the Asia Pacific region during the colonial period. The extent of the shared trading history within the region and late nineteenth-century intraregional shipping operations belonging to companies such as Burns Philp and KPM further underwrites the extent of border crossing instances. Publications on these topics, however, primarily focus on the social and cultural or commercial relations that emerged from the production and trading of commodities across the region’s colonial borders. We know very little of how these cosmopolitan social and cultural relations were manifest in major

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settlements in the region or the built traces that they might have left behind in these typically remote locations. Ethnic separation was practised in the arrangement of living quarters in major Asia-facing trading or production centres such as Broome and Darwin, and in the segregated sitting arrangement in public entertainment facilities such as cinemas. Moore’s fine-grained study of the Kanaka community of the Mackay district, focusing on those who originated in the island of Malaita in the Solomons group, describes their living conditions in detail – either timber and corrugated iron dormitories provided by their employers or selfbuilt houses of grass and other found materials, after the habitations on their home islands.24 These houses were their preference. The Melanesians did not mix with European Queenslanders, but they did regularly visit Mackay’s Chinatown.25 Kathryn Cronin notes that, following the arrival of the Chinese and South Sea Islanders labourers in Queensland since the 1840s, by 1875 their presence, ‘amounting to about 10 per cent of the total population, constituted an obvious impediment to the achievement of an homogenous population, an eminently desirable target in the eyes of many of European colonists.’26 In Cooktown, around 22,000 Chinese arrived in the space of the three years between 1875 and 1877.27 Buildings and settlements had to be constructed to accommodate these labourers which in many cases were built by the labourers themselves. These contributed to the formation and expansion of many townships in late nineteenth-century Queensland, particularly in locations associated with sugar plantations, mining, and pastoral development. A brief depiction of Malay town in Cairns in the 1940s can be found in Martínez and Vickers’ study where they refer to the Australian artist Donald Friend’s painting of the neighbourhood where Muslim Javanese and Malay labourers resided in ‘a series of ramshackle stilt houses, Malay style ….’28 Martínez and Vickers elsewhere underscore that the widely used term ‘Malay’ is a racial category created and used as a common term in colonial Asia Pacific to identify and classify what is otherwise a diverse group of labourers of different ethnicities originated from the Dutch East Indies.29 The ethnic diversity of the ‘Malay’ labourers, their languages and architectural traditions, are part of the Austronesian cultural landscape of the maritime Asia Pacific, including Southeast Asia and South Pacific. The ‘Malay’-style stilt house identified in Donald Friends’ painting exemplifies one of the most common features of Austronesian vernacular dwelling form and timber craftmanship.30 Other features of Austronesian vernacular dwelling are the use of timber materials and deep verandah space as a strategy to deal with the hot and humid climate of the region.31 The transient nature of the Asian and Melanesian labourers’ settlements, however, means that few traces are left; these places were also largely undocumented due to their peripheral locations and impermanence. The migrant workers from the Indies soon integrated with the host society as they moved further, or were forcefully relocated, to the more urban settlements, and as they assimilated through marriage. Built traces of their independent existence and of their role in the construction of built infrastructure in the resource-rich areas were erased. Racial tension that quickly developed between the Asian/Pacific migrants and European settlers led to the introduction of the Immigration Restriction Act in 1901, one of the first parliamentary acts of the newly federated nation of Australia.32 Kanaka labourers from Melanesia were particular victims of this policy: forced repatriation returned thousands of these people to their ostensible home islands from 1906. Burns Philp were involved in shipping these labourers to Queensland soon after the firm’s incorporation; they also profited from transporting them out of Queensland.33 Those Melanesians allowed to stay by dint of long residence in Australia or birth there were forced out of the sugar industry and eked out a precarious existence on the invisible margins of Queensland society.34 The ensuing era of the White Australia Policy further diminished general public awareness of the border crossing practices and cosmopolitanism embedded in late nineteenth-century agricultural and marine industries in northern Australia.

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These border crossing flows of goods, labour and building forms and practices across the region are symptomatic of the notion of ‘drifting’ introduced by Stephen Cairns in the edited collection Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy (2004) which looks into the interplay between architecture and the movement of individuals and groups of people. Drifting characterizes the destabilization of architecture of place by flows of capitals, ideas, images, as well as people.35 Cairns underscores how experiences of migration challenge the common long-standing perception of architecture and place as distinctive and stable. He reflects on the agency of migrancy in the colonial world as the flows of ideas and people between the metropole and the colony left behind widespread evidence in colonial architectural hybridity, ranging from appropriations of classical, Gothic and Art Deco styles throughout European colonies and the adaptation in Asia of local traditions and vernacular forms in the production of urban civic infrastructure and housing. Architectural history has been primarily concerned with instances of colonial architectural hybrids as they were manifest in the experiments of colonial elites and prominent European architects working in the colonies. Stepping out of these exemplary urban realms, we are concerned instead with the flow of architectural ideas and images as they were transmitted through the agency of migrating plantation labourers, companies and operators. These transmissions were enabled by the expansion of shipping and trading networks across nineteenth-century Asia Pacific. The invention of photographic technology in the mid-nineteenth century and its subsequent history as the main visual medium in recording and promoting agricultural industrialization in the region offer an extensive field of visual traces of the archipelagic presence. Malay hutments in northern Australian locations may not have been recorded, but many other buildings associated with colonial agriculture and extraction in Australia’s north were. We contend that the photographic record suggests that these were hybrid buildings, informed by Asia Pacific precedents.

Across borders: Hybrid built forms in the age of commerce A seminal study by Anthony King on the global history of the bungalow as a residential type and popular architectural term underscores how architectural ideas were transmitted and developed across a vast region through colonialism.36 King’s study traces the adaptation of a dwelling form originating from mid-­ eighteenth-century Anglo-India. He locates the widespread use of the term ‘bungalow’ within the particular geo-political territory of the extensive British colonial world. The term refers to a free-standing villa type or a large country house featuring the extensive use of verandas. King links the spread of the type in Australia to military engineers and officers formerly serving in British India who retired and settled in different British colonies, including New South Wales and Victoria in the mid-nineteenth century. King proposes that the adaptation of the bungalow model in Australia occurred through the agency of military personnel moving between the Caribbean, Britain, India and Australia. In particular King highlights the case of the Queenslander house as ‘the most “bungalow-looking” dwellings in Australia’.37 King is critical of the depiction of the ‘tropical bungalow’ of Queensland in earlier studies by John Freeland as ‘the closest that Australia has ever come to producing an Indigenous style’ while highlighting how the Queenslander house features architectural elements and spatial configurations that were already established in the Anglo-Indian world since the mid-eighteenth century.38 King writes that the house form itself is perhaps ‘less unique to Australia’ than some historians have suggested.39 The more recent writing on the residential type seems to have accepted King’s theory while at the same time underscoring the veranda feature as a unique response to the hot and humid climate: British colonial traditions previously developed in India and elsewhere influenced the adoption of extensive deep shading external verandas on two, three or four sides of the typical Queenslander. These

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protected spaces provide a refuge from Queensland’s extreme summer sun and rain deluges, while also functioning as clever breeze scoops to direct cooling natural ventilation through the house.40

Roderick’s University of Queensland PhD of 2004, ‘The origins of the elevated Queensland house’, also rehearses the idea that British military personnel brought many of the features now seen as unique to the Queensland house with them to Australia. But in his view it was not India but previous service in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia which was key. Moreover, for Roderick it is not the verandah but the house’s elevation which is the most important differentiating characteristic of the Queenslander. Roderick in particular examines the aborted settlement of Port Essington on the Coburg Peninsula in northern Australia in 1838, intended by the British as an entrepôt for Asian trade, where the key buildings of the nascent settlement were all built on elevated piles. He notes that in both the British colonial possessions of the Caribbean and insular and peninsular Southeast Asia there were precedents for the elevation of buildings as a response to ‘miasma’ and mosquitos. George Windsor Earl, who was responsible for the Port Essington settlement, was familiar with building practices in Singapore. Roderick also points out that the official party that established Port Essington travelled there via Sydney, where they were instructed to meet the Governor George Gipps; both Gipps and his Chief Engineer Captain Barney had previously served with the Royal Engineers in the West Indies where British military buildings followed the local practice of elevation on piles or columns with ventilated spaces underneath.41 Before Roderick, the significance of Port Essington to the development of the Queensland house had been assayed by Freeland, and Cox, Freeland and Stacey.42 In his 1984 book Timber and Iron: Houses in North Queensland Mining Settlements, however, Peter Bell comments that the influence of Port Essington on the emergence of the elevated Queensland house, which he dates to the 1870s in the sugar growing regions of the Pioneer, Burdekin and Herbert rivers, is inconclusive: too far geographically and chronologically.43 Referencing Paul Memmott, Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu mentions that Indigenous people in the Gulf country and Torres Strait Islands ‘built complicated structures on stilts’, and while it is remarkable that such a possible Indigenous precedent seems to have been ignored in discussion of the origins of the Queenslander, there is still the problem here of geography.44 Bell’s view is that the north Queensland house represents not a locally unique vernacular but rather the local modification of light timber frame construction, its origins being found in emerging industrial practices in Britain itself (and not in American balloon framing as suggested by Freeland and other historians). Elevation – though geographically a widespread building practice – also has a European precedent: in granaries to fight vermin rather than fever.45 Beside its putative Indian origins, Bell’s work challenges another of King’s widely accepted arguments about the Queensland house: the role of verandahs in the building’s response to climate. In his on the ground surveys of houses in nineteenth-century Queensland mining towns, Bell found that verandahs were often attached on house elevations that thermally did not need them most; rather than being built in response to the incidence of sun, they were oriented according to the building’s relationship to the street.46 Beyond the established association of the Queenslander with British colonial legacy in Australia – highly contested though this turns out to be – this chapter reconsiders the dwelling type not in connection to broad imperial geography but rather to Queensland’s long-standing history of trade and labour practices shared with its more adjacent tropical colonial neighbours, such as the South Pacific and the Dutch East Indies. A shift from the monopoly era to the more open liberal trading system was embraced by most Asia Pacific colonies in the mid-nineteenth century, notwithstanding the practices of colonial states in Eastern Australia. Each of these states competed to bring in private investment from various European sources. In turn, European capital was invested across multiple locations in the Asia Pacific region irrespective of colonial borders.

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The development of the Queenslander house mostly occurred between the 1870s and 1890s, coinciding with the pioneering years of the state’s sugar plantations and industry. As we have already noted, the geographical centre for this house’s development suggested by Bell – the Burdekin, Pioneer and Herbert rivers – are some of Queensland’s most important sugar districts. Historian Alan Frost has also argued that the archetypal Queenslander house originated in the sugar plantations of the Herbert River. He persuasively traces the gradual dissemination of the type but as a non-architectural historian he is less interested in the question of the building’s geographical genealogy.47 Frost identifies the first elevated house as a building constructed in 1869 by Henry Stone on the south bank of the Herbert River. Prior to this Stone had constructed another elevated building in 1865 on the Herbert River floodplain at the Vale of Herbert. The surviving photograph depicts a remarkable structure whose steep pitched roof formed sheltering walls in the manner of the vernacular buildings found in New Guinea and the Pacific. Raised high on stumps and accessible from a central stair, it was a one-room, well-ventilated building. Frost contends that the European settlers in the district elevated their dwellings as a precaution against malaria. The district was well known for its fevers. By August 1871 there were five European buildings on the southside of the Herbert River and all were highset. However, it is not clear how the building type evolved from the low stumps and sheltering roof structure of the Vale of Herbert to the large-scale elevated form. Buildings associated with the sugar industry were constructed as accommodations for plantation managers and employees of shipping and trading companies that facilitated the distribution of the commodity, amongst others. In the subsequent part of this chapter, we propose that the formation of the Queensland ‘tropical bungalow’ with its elevation from the ground using timber stilts needs to be considered alongside the emergence of plantation estates and planter residences in neighbouring major agricultural centres, such those in Java, Sumatra and eastern Indonesia. This is not to deny wider British imperial influences, but as we have pointed out these are in any case multiple and inconclusive. What we wish to do is to complicate the story further, not to simplify it. As we have already stated, the history of Australia’s sugar industry demonstrates that extensive contacts existed between Queensland and Java. While these contacts were between proprietors and owners, they also occurred through the importation to Australia of Malay labourers. The formation and spread of the Queenslander house need to be considered alongside the migration of labour from Asia and  the Pacific as well as technologies and expertise mediated through managerial exchange between sugar industries in different geographic regions of the broader Asia Pacific. Buildings are both part of these technologies, part of what is exchanged and mediated, and are also relevant to labour practices: labour needed to be accommodated. A cross-cultural traffic or embodied knowledge of timber building and craft conditions restores the lost presence of Javanese, Chinese and Malay craftsmen to Australian architectural history in Queensland. This should be taken to complement histories such as King’s, Roderick’s and Bell’s that dwell on more distant, imperial, connections. Clive Moore has argued that the sugar plantation landscapes were also inscribed with the material culture of Melanesian customary architecture, although these buildings have an even fainter presence in the photographic archive. While Melanesian labourers frequently built their own huts on the properties where they were employed, emulating as best they could the symbolic order of their houses on their home islands, this practice was frowned upon by the government administrators who oversaw Kanaka labour. If it was tolerated by plantation owners this was because it obviated a need on their part to build other housing.48 Melanesian customary building therefore had no impact on wider building practices on the Queensland plantations, though, as mentioned below, there is evidence that Kanaka workers who remained in Queensland after 1906 were sometimes employed as building labourers. But otherwise, we want to suggest, the stylistic choices made in sugar plantation buildings imply the connectedness of those who commissioned and built them and place these buildings within a network of geographical relationships.

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We will explore this proposition by showcasing a series of photographic images illustrating planters’ and traders’ residences in different parts of the colonial Asia Pacific and reflecting on their similar architectural features and built craftsmanship.

Drifting architecture, traces of connection: Timber house on piles with enclosing veranda As agricultural industrialization gained momentum in the late colonial era, it unleashed the extensive construction of built infrastructure. This was not only to accommodate distribution of commodities from sites of production to the port cities from which they were exported, but also to accommodate the growing size and operations of plantation enterprises, their labourers and their managers. In the Dutch East Indies, vernacular forms of the immediate rural region were adapted and local building craftsmanship employed in the construction of buildings for colonial agricultural enterprises (Figure. 10.2). Large sheds and warehouses were constructed in the shape of long houses and gable structures to store, dry and process tobacco

Fig. 10.2  Indigenous Malay House in the East Sumatra region of Deli, c. 1900 (top left), Residence of Tobacco and Rubber Plantation Managers in Deli, c. 1880 (top right), Residence of Burns Philp’s plantation manager in Samarai (low left, c. 1910s), Sugar Planter’s Residence near Gairloch Sugar Mill Ingham, Queensland, c. 1881 (low right). Source: top row: Leiden University Libraries (KITLV 35770 and KITLV111550); bottom row: Macleay Collection, Chau Chak Wing Museum HP 84.60.941(left), State Library of Queensland (right).

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leaves and sugar cane. Timber for these buildings was obtained from large-scale forest clearing. Local craftsmanship and natural materials such as bamboo and natural fiber were utilized in the construction of residential villas or homesteads for the European planters and plantation administrators, while appropriating the iconic yet familiar form of the dwellings of local village elites. Meanwhile, large barracks and new settlements were often built by contract migrant labourers, embodying the transplantation of different styles of buildings to which the migrants were accustomed.49 Building construction methods applied in plantation areas are different to the methods utilized in colonial administration centres and trading ports. Neo-classical architectural styles and Victorian architecture dominated the productions of civic and office buildings respectively in mid-nineteenth-century Batavia, Singapore and Melbourne with their extensive use of and experience with masonry construction. However, in contrast, agricultural centres in rural locations across the Asia Pacific extensively showcased timber craftsmanship and the specific building materials of these regional locations. Philip Cox and Clive Lucas’s contention that colonial farm buildings in Australia adopted (or adapted) the Indigenous building practice of the use of sheets of bark as building claddings – to be replaced when it became available with corrugated iron – is a parallel phenomenon.50 Residences of European plantation owners and high-ranking managers, such as those of rubber and tobacco plantation managers in Deli in eastern Sumatra, Gairloch in Queensland and Burns Philp & Co’s trading post manager in Samarai, are featured extensively in colonial period photography (Figure 10.2). In the case of the Dutch East Indies, these photographs often appeared in albums commissioned from leading commercial studios such as the Singapore-based C.J. Kleingrothe and the Batavia-based Woodbury and Page (previously from North Melbourne and Woodend, Victoria). These company albums were used to attract further investment from the European homeland. They were widely distributed in Europe and exhibited at the colonial trade expositions. Through this process, the architectural image of the plantation residence drifts across Europe, informing future investors and high-ranking employees of the type of built landscape they would encounter and be absorbed into, should they choose to participate in this very profitable colonial commercial enterprise. The houses of plantation managers were at once iconic and typical. They are iconic in their locations in so far as they are often prominently located and immediately distinguishable due to their monumental form – their size – and from being elevated off the ground on timber piles. They are, however, also typical in the way they pronounced the elite status of their occupants through size, height and the formal language of architectural symmetry. Because of their almost square and symmetrical plans, most residences of highranked plantation officials featured pyramidal shaped roofs, a form that implied prestige and authority. The main entrance of these residences was consistently marked by an accentuated porte-cochere where the occupants could park their horse carts. A formal wooden staircase leading to the upper-level open balcony was another typical feature of the residences. The overall form and composition created a commanding view across the surrounding landscape and a sense of authority for the occupants. Although these houses featured different types of building materials and ornamental languages, they consistently conformed to the same architectural type. Elaborate detailing of window panels and wooden balustrades as well as the painting of the timber columns and eventually the whole structure in white further signified the prestige and authority of the typically European occupants of these buildings. These plantation houses in Sumatra are curiously like those at sugar plantations in Queensland, for example a house built for the Gairloch Sugar Mill, at Ingham, c. 1881. Gairloch was unusual in that its first proprietor, the engineer Alexander Mackenzie, had been a coffee planter in Wynaad, southern India. Mackenzie’s plantation was part of a cluster of cane farms established in the Herbert River region between 1869 and 1872 after the first successful cane growing in Mackay by John Spiller, who had visited Java

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to gain instruction and returned with Javanese canes which he planted on the north bank of the Pioneer River.51 A snapshot image of the Gairloch house in 1875 shows a portion of the house raised on high posts, which are largely cut by adze with a corner post of milled timber. The early plantations looked to Java for expertise as noted, but Alan Frost contends that the West Indian islands, particularly French Guadalupe, provided the distinctive economic and social form of the plantation.52 The Queenslander house might also be related to the vernacular buildings of Guadalupe. In 1875 a fungal disease temporarily ruined the sugar cane industry and the Mackenzies left Gairloch in 1876. In 1880 the plantation was considerably upgraded following its purchase by a Melbourne-based mercantile company, Fanning, Nankivell and Co.53 They ran an import, export business with trade to the Mauritius, China, India and London.54 The photograph depicts the new plantation house established by the Mauritian manager Charles Leon Burguez in 1880.55 In a 1882 newspaper piece published to celebrate the lavish new mill building at Gairloch, two hundred kanaka and Chinese labourers were recorded as part of the plantation work force. Once again the house, its occupiers and owners can be placed in complex circuits of global cultural exchange. The 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition would have provided the Melbourne-based merchants with exposure to models and photographs of vernacular building forms from the ‘Straits Settlements’, a territory comprising Penang, Singapore, Malacca and Dindings. Sugar plantations operated in Penang with labour supplied by Chinese and Tamil workers. A centrepiece of the 1880 Straits Settlements display was a model of a kampong, described in the catalogue as ‘Two Malay Houses’, exhibited by the Straits Settlements Government (Figure 10.3).56 Sugar products were also arrayed around the display table. Photographs of the Straits Settlements and Malay Peninsula produced by the Government photographer can be seen on the wall, although they are too small for the buildings and landscapes to be legible to the contemporary eye. Inter-colonial exhibitions and transnational agricultural literature provide another under-explored resource for tracking the exchanges of architectural knowledge across the Asia Pacific. The Sumatra plantation houses are also like houses for Burns Philp managers in Queensland and the Pacific. Burns Philp’s archival collection held at the ANU’s Noel Butlin Archives Centre and the University of Sydney’s Macleay Museum holds extensive photographic documentation of buildings established by the company to facilitate the expansion of its plantation, trading and shipping enterprise through the South Pacific region. Several photographic albums from the early decades of the twentieth century were apparently assembled by Burns Philp staff sent from Sydney to inspect its far-flung operations. They include images of what are clearly Burns Philp facilities, but they also included photographs of local people and buildings most likely intended as stock images for the company’s tourism brochures, photographs that documented the living conditions of Burns Philp staff, and some whose status is not yet clear. The recording and transmission of ideas about, as well as cross-cultural encounters within, colonial Asia Pacific were inherent in the production of these photographic images. Typical of these images are those of the Burns Philp manager’s residence at Samarai, an island at the far eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. For Burns Philp, Samarai was an important staging post for shipping routes between ports on the Queensland coast and those that its ships served in the western Pacific. Burns Philp established a permanent trading presence there in 1891. Although Burns Philp’s own copra plantations were in the Solomon Islands,57 the profitability of its Samarai branch was dependent first on business from gold prospecting and Trobriand Island pearling and then on copra plantations in the locality. Like its other bases in the western and central Pacific, Samarai was to thrive during the boom in the copra trade which expanded massively in the years just before the First World War.58 Business from plantations made it one of Burns Philp’s most lucrative branches. Also in the Burns Philp archive are drawings and photographs of company accommodations for its staff at Rabaul. In 1914 when Australian military authorities occupied the town, till then part of German colonial

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Fig. 10.3  Straits Settlements Court, Temporary Annexe, Exhibition Building, 1880–1881. Source: Museums Victoria https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/1563086. Photographer: Ludovico Hart.

territory, Burns Philp returned to Rabaul with a vessel to supply relief provisions to the German residents.59 After the war, the company established a permanent trading post there. Among archival materials linked to this particular aspect of the company’s history are the 1920 drawings for a Rabaul ‘mess bungalow’ with six bedrooms grouped around a central living area and a separate but connected cookhouse (Figure 10.4; top image). The drawings were produced in Pyrmont, Sydney by A.C Saxton & Sons, a timber, joinery and builders’ supply company. A photograph survives of a Burns Philp building in Rabaul of this period (Figure 10.4; middle image) although it is uncertain as to whether it is a variation of the building in the drawings or whether it was built to house higher ranked staff. The design of the mess resonates with the style of a ‘traditional’ Queenslander house as exemplified in the house at Gairloch Sugar Mill. It also resonates with the design of the house called Selhurst in Townsville commissioned by the Burns Philp manager in North Queensland, John Alexander Carpenter. The Queensland Government’s Heritage Register entry for this building speculatively suggests that it was

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Fig. 10.4  Top image: Drawing of BP’s plantation employee drafted by Sydney based timber and joinery merchant. Source: Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU. Middle image: Copra Planter’s Home in Rabaul, New Britain then Territory of New Guinea (today part of Papua New Guinea) c. 1920s; Source: Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU Bottom Image: Sulawesi’s timber house for Indigenous elites of Gowa Sultanate (1880s–1920s). Source: KITLV Archives, Leiden University Library, Leiden.

designed by a Townsville-based architect, Walter Hunt and that it was constructed between 1914 and 1915 using South Sea Islander labour. While the link between the construction of Selhurst and the Rabaul mess is established through the Burns Philp connection and the use of Islander labour, we would speculate further on broader regional connectivity by taking into account the extent of the network of copra plantations in the region. Copra plantations in the South Pacific region were a key feature of the expansion of Australia’s colonial ambition in the region. Copra was an important commodity, traded across the South Pacific, Australia and the eastern islands of Dutch East Indies, and eventually to Europe and the United States. In the Dutch East

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Indies, South Sulawesi was a major producer well served by the port at Makassar, the most established port in Eastern Indonesia with direct connections to Broome, Darwin, Rabaul, Thursday Island and most South Pacific ports served by the Burns Philp shipping network and by KPM. South Sulawesi’s most influential Indigenous ruling group at the time was the Gowa Sultanate whose members were also key native merchants actively shaping the production and trading of copra.60 The architecture of residences of the ruling members of the Gowa Sultanate (Figure 10.4, bottom image) has similarities to the design of Burns Philp’s Rabaul mess, with its echoes as well of the architecture of the tropical Queenslander. This signals another possible pathway of cross-cultural influence in the shaping of plantation settlements and the spread of the bungalow type across the tropical Asia Pacific region. Houses for the employees and managers of colonial plantation estates and the trading companies that profited from their expansion, as exemplified in the residences of the Deli plantation overseers in Eastern Sumatra, the Burns Philp manager at Samarai and the Gairloch mill manager in Queensland, are among the most prominent built features of the plantation and trading landscapes depicted in the photographic albums commissioned by their proprietors in the later colonial era. Further research is required to identify and trace the actual transmission of certain architectural forms, features and actors associated with the expansion of the colonial plantation economy. However, the similarity of these planter and trader residences is apparent in the photographs that document them. Late nineteenth-century shipping companies acted as plantation agencies and travel operators in the region, and their role in facilitating the archipelagic transmission of architectural forms, should not be underestimated. The shipping companies’ regional operations and their pioneering vision to connect multiple sites of commercial agricultural productions in the Asia Pacific region transmitted not only goods and people but also ideas, methods, experiences and expertise across borders. Plantation manager residences combine the idea of a countryside villa with the formal features of vernacular dwellings belonging to prominent members of Indigenous communities in the remote and fertile regions of colonial Asia Pacific. This kind of dwelling is a particular building type which accompanied the expansion of sugar, copra and tobacco plantations in different colonial contexts in this region: Eastern Sumatra in Dutch East Indies, New Guinea in the South Pacific and Queensland in Australia. These are dispersed locations which are otherwise rarely discussed in relation to each other. It appears that there was an archipelagic transmission of architectural forms as a facet of the colonial architectural history of the region.

Conclusion Studies of vernacular architectural traditions in the Asia Pacific region have rarely been written in relation to the establishment of colonial plantation estates. These estates dramatically transformed the natural and urban landscapes of the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The development of large-scale commercial agriculture also entailed the building of trade networks with their accompanying architectural infrastructures. However, in architectural discourse about Southeast Asia, the predominant approach is to document and identify the particularity of each vernacular tradition. The long-standing dependence on earlier visual accounts and insights into the socio-cultural practices of Indigenous societies in the region as established by ethnographers and anthropologists has narrowed the focus of the field down to a collection of isolated readings of material and social practices.61 These are assumed to be contained within particular geographical locations and to be unique to particular ethnic groups. In Australia this geographic narrowness is also the case. Buildings such as woolsheds have been read as manifestations of a local vernacular when their production was motivated by a trade in wool that was international. The tendency – until King – to see the Queenslander as an exemplary local building type is symptomatic of

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a similarly national frame of reference. Taking the nation state as its fundamental unit of investigation has compartmentalized the colonial architectural history of Asia Pacific so that parallels and entanglements, as this chapter seeks to highlight and speculate on, have not come into focus. Yet, the establishment of colonial plantations and the subsequent fluid movement of labour and building methods in colonial Asia Pacific since the mid-nineteenth century, as this chapter has shown, directly affected – if not breached – the previously conceived borders that have been used to locate and define national traditions in the region. The inter-colonial movement of labour and ideas and the emergence of new patterns of built forms we have seen in the spread of the plantation dwelling typology could be presented as an overlooked aspect of Asia Pacific intra-regional colonial modernity. This modernity was informed by, and subsequently affected, the transformation of vernacular architecture in multiple localities in this region. Through their specificity, the archival collections assembled by colonial entities and the nineteenth-century photographs on which this study relies also compartmentalized, racialized and nationalized the historical network of labour movements and cross-cultural exchanges that operated through the expansion of regional trade and shipping in the region. The conventions of archival systems contradict the metaphor of fluidity, a key concept in the transnational lexicon. As the trading companies’ operations and colonial states’ mechanisms testify, the material space of flow – of commodities, labour and built infrastructure – was constructed and controlled, and inexorably shaped, by racialized boundaries and borders. Minority groups were contained, segregated or highly specified in their types of labour and places of work and residence both within colonial plantation estates, aboard ships and in overseas port townships. This history is partly documented in Race Relations in Colonial Queensland: A History of Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination as well as in Taming the Coolie Beast: Plantation Society and the Colonial Order in Southeast Asia.62 Yet the hybrid buildings analysed in this chapter, the multiple origins and subsequent trajectories of ideas, forms and labour they embodied reveal multicultural cross-cultural contacts, exchanges and cultural absorptions. This is a past barely yet represented in Asian Pacific architectural history.

Notes 1. For historical accounts on the formation of the steamship service in the Dutch East Indies and the growth of KPM, see Joseph Norbert Frans Marie à Campo, Engines of Empire: Steamshipping and State Formation in Colonial Indonesia (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002); Adrian Vickers, A History of Modern Indonesia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Howard Dick and Jean Gelma Taylor, Global Indonesia (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013). 2. Ken Buckley and Kris Klugman, The History of Burns Philp: The Australian company in the South Pacific (Sydney: Burns Philp, 1981), 3–8. 3. According to the 1903 company publication All about Burns, Philp & Company, Limited, their shipping agencies, branches & steamers, 20, KPM was represented in Australia by Burns Philp. 4. Buckley and Klugman, 182 & 284. See also Paul Walker & Amanda Achmadi, ‘Advertising “The East”: Encounters with the Urban and the Exotic in Late Colonial Asia Pacific’, Fabrications 29, no. 2 (2019): 155–9. 5. See Walker and Achmadi, ‘Advertising “The East”’. 6. KPM (Koninklijke Patetvaart – Maatschappij) Isles of the East: The Royal Packet Steam Navigation, An Illustrated Guide Australia, Papua, Java, Sumatra, Etc. (1912): xix. Burns Philps’ equivalent was Picturesque Travel, published in 6 editions between 1912 and 1925. See Walker and Achmadi, ‘Advertising “The East”’, 158–60. 7. Joost Coté, ‘Staging Modernity: The Semarang International Colonial Exhibition, 1914’, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 40, no. 1 (2006): 1–44. 8. Coté, ‘Staging Modernity’, 3.

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9. Yulia Nurliani Lukito, ‘Colonial Exhibitions, Hybrid Architecture, and the Interpretation of Modernity in the Dutch East Indies’, Journal of Cultural Geography 36, no. 3 (2019): 291–316. 10. Views of the Calcutta Exhibition, Album of Photographs given to Herbert Reginald Robert Seymour Walpole. State Library of Victoria MS14954/1. 11. Paul Battersby, To the Islands: White Australians and the Malay Archipelago since 1788 (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2007). 12. Battersby, To the Islands, 31–3. 13. Julia Martínez and Adrian Vickers, The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia’s Northern Trading Network (Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 2015). 14. Charles Campbell Macknight, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1976) for a study on long standing early contact between the Macassan sailors and community of the Eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi and the Indigenous community of Northern Australia. 15. See Battersby, To the Islands, also Nahid Kabir, ‘MacKay Revisited: The Case of Javanese-Australian Muslims, 1880–1999’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 16, no. 3 (2007): 405–24; Peter D. Griggs, Global Industry, Local Innovation: The History of Cane Sugar Production in Australia (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011). 16. Clive Moore, Kanaka: A History of Melanesian Mackay (Port Moresby: Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies and University of Papua New Guinea Press, 1985), 256. 17. Moore, Kanaka, 167. 18. It should be noted that descendants of the people referred to in nineteenth-century Australia as the Kanaka now largely prefer to be known as Australian South Sea Islanders. 19. Amanda Achmadi, ‘The Architecture of Cultuurstelsel in Nineteenth–century Dutch East Indies: Built Traces of Colonial Agricultural Industry’, in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 33 Gold, ed. AnnMarie Brennan and Philip Goad (Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2016), 2–12. 20. Griggs, Global Industry, Local Innovation, 130. 21. Griggs, Global Industry, Local Innovation, 1–2. 22. Griggs, Global Industry, Local Innovation, 130. 23. Kabir, ‘MacKay Revisited’, 408–9. 24. Moore, Kanaka, 202–7. 25. Moore, Kanaka, 180–1. Moore records that in 1884 Mackay had a Chinese population of 500; on Saturday nights in the 1880s, 500–800 Melanesians out of a total of 3000 in the Mackay district descended on the town and headed straight for Chinatown. For a study of the Chinese community in Queensland around the same period of time studied by Moore, see Kathryn Cronin, ‘The Chinese Community in Queensland, 1874–1900’, Queensland Heritage 2, no. 8 (1973): 3–13. Cronin’s article features multiple photographs of buildings associated with the Chinese communities in Cooktown, Brisbane and Cairns. 26. Cronin, Chinese Community, 3. 27. Ibid., 3. 28. Martínez and Vickers, The Pearl Frontier, 103. 29. Martínez and Vickers, The Pearl Frontier, 16–20. 30. Martínez and Vickers, The Pearl Frontier, 103. 31. For an invaluable anthropological study of Austronesian architecture in Southeast Asia, see Roxana Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (Singapore: Tuttle Publishing, 2014 (1990)); James J. Fox, Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living (Canberra: ANU Press, 2006). 32. A more complex circumstance surrounding the tightening of Australia’s immigration policy was explained in the work of Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds. They argue that Australia together with north America and key settler

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colonies such as South Africa was part of an international discussion about the potential disappearance of the white races through non-white migration and population growth. See Henry Reynolds and Marilyn Lake, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the Question of Racial Equality (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008). 33. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 24–6; 144; 164. 34. Moore, Kanaka, 275–6. 35. Stephen Cairns (ed.), Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004). 36. Anthony King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1984) 37. King, The Bungalow, 232. 38. In 1968 architectural historian John Freeland declared that the Queenslander house is ‘the closest that Australia has come to producing an Indigenous style’. Cited in King, The Bungalow, 232; Freeland, Architecture in Australia: A History (Melbourne: Penguin, 1968), 209. See also Philip Cox, John Freeland and Wesley Stacey, Rude Timber Buildings in Australia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1980), 64: ‘By the nineties, then, there had developed in parts of New South Wales, and particularly in Queensland, a type of building which was usually square in plan, raised off the ground on heavy tree-trunk stumps, a tight box of rooms whose timber bones showed, surrounded by wide verandahs laced into a band of deep trellis work and topped by a pyramid roof. Growing logically out of physical causes, it had a distinctive character that was the closest that Australia has ever come to producing an Indigenous style.’ 39. King, The Bungalow, 233. 40. Lindy Osborne, ‘Sublime Design: The Queenslander’, The Conversation, 17 June 2014, accessed 20 January 2019, https://theconversation.com/sublime-design-the-queenslander–27225. See also Robert Riddel, ‘The Discovery of Queensland’s Architectural History’, in Hot Modernism: Queensland Architecture 1945–1975, ed.  John Macarthur, Deborah van der Plaat, Janina Gosseye and Andrew Wilson (London: Artifice Books, 2015), 102. Apparently alluding to King, Don Watson notes that key elements of the Queensland colonial house were introduced by military engineers with ‘colonial experience in warmer climates such as the Mediterranean and further afield’. However, he still avers that ‘In retrospect, the Queensland house has often been regarded as Australia’s most distinctive architectural expression.’ Watson, ‘Queensland Colonial’, in Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, ed. Paul Oliver (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1080–1. 41. Donald Roderick, ‘The Origins of the Elevated Queensland House’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, 2004, 179. 42. Freeland, Architecture in Australia, 118, 207; Cox, Freeland & Stacey, Rude Timber Buildings in Australia, 63. 43. Peter Bell, Timber and Iron: Houses in North Queensland Mining Settlements, 1861–1920 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984), 95; 205. 44. Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu, 2nd Edition (Broome: Magabala Books, 2018), 119; Paul Memmott, Gunyah, Goondie and Wurley: The Aboriginal Architecture of Australia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2007), 170. 45. Bell, Timber and Iron, 101, 204, 95. 46. Bell, Timber and Iron, 90-91. 47. Alan Frost, East Coast Country: A North Queensland Dreaming (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1996), 176–9. 48. Moore, Kanaka, 205; 210–11. 49. Achmadi, ‘The Architecture of Cultuurstelsel in Nineteenth-century Dutch East Indies’. 50. Philip Cox and Clive Lucas, Australian Colonial Architecture (East Melbourne: Lansdowne Editions, 1978), 5 51. The geographical backgrounds of these ‘pioneer’ planters in Mackay and Herbert River are described in Kay Saunders, Workers in Bondage: The Origins and Bases of Unfree Labour in Queensland 1824–1916 (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1982), 50–4.

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52. Frost, East Coast Country, 113. 53. Peter Griggs, ‘Sugar Plantations in Queensland, 1864–1912: Origins, Characteristics, Distribution, and Decline’, in Agricultural History 74, no.3 (Summer 2000): 623 and ‘A Queensland Sugar Mill’, The Brisbane Courier, Monday 6 November 1882, 3. 54. H. Mortimer Franklyn, A Glance at Australia in 1880: Or Food from the South (Melbourne: Victoria Review Publishing Company, 1881), 215. 55. Frost, East Coast Country, 159. 56. Straits Settlements Court International Exhibition, Melbourne, 1880 Catalogue Exhibits (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1880), 7. 57. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 277. 58. Buckley and Klugman, The History of Burns Philp, 132, 203, 241–3. 59. Buckley and Klugman, 284–5. 60. Christiaan Heersink, Dependence on Green Gold: A Socio-economic History of the Indonesian Coconut Island Selayar (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1999). See Also beb vuyk and H. J. Friedericy, Two Tales of the East Indies (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983). 61. See Imran bin Tajudeen, ‘Colonial-Vernacular Houses of Java, Malaya, and Singapore in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Architectural Translations in the Rumah Limas, Compound House, and Indische Woonhuis’, ABE Journal [Online] 11, (2017), online since 5 October 2017, connection on 30 October 2020. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/abe/3715; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.3715 for an exploration of connections between Indigenous societies that crossed the British/Dutch colonial divide in Southeast Asia, and the emergence of certain colonial vernacular dwelling type in urban areas impacted by colonial practices in the region. See also Amanda Achmadi, ‘The Other Side of Tropical Paradise: Traces of Modernism within the Vernacular Landscapes of Early Twentieth-Century Bali’, in ABE Journal [Online], 9–10 (2016), Online since 28 December 2016, connection on 30 October 2020. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/abe/3211; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.3211 for an exploration of colonial history of vernacular built tradition of the island of Bali. 62. Raymond Evans, Kay Saunders and Kathryn Cronin, Race Relations in Colonial Queensland: A History of Exclusion, Exploitation, and Extermination (St Lucia, Queensland: Queensland University Press, 1993); Jan Breman, Taming the Coolie Beast: Plantation Society and the Colonial Order in Southeast Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). See Also pal ahluwalia, Bill Ashcrift and Roger Knight (eds.), White and Deadly: Sugar and Colonialism (New York: Nova Science Publishers Inc., 1999); Ann Laura Stoler, Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt 1870–1979 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995 [1985]).

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11  Hand in hand with crossed top plates: Mapping the contribution of Chinese carpenters to the production and installation of Melbourne’s prefabricated ‘Singapore cottages’

  JOHN TING

Introduction The Singapore cottage was a modern response to the modern problems of its time. Although the Collingwood examples contrast with the Victorian architectural fabric of Collingwood, they are significant historically, as they contributed to fulfilling nineteenth-century housing and skills shortages. Vernacular or Indigenous architecture and construction was considered inappropriate for some colonizers in some settlements, and the cottages offered a more familiar alternative. Thousands of these houses were manufactured in Singapore and imported into Australia in knocked-down or flat-packed form, complete with timber floor, wall and roof frames, cladding and fenestration. After fulfilling their original need, many continued being mobile as they were relocated to newer areas to continue functioning as dwellings, and some have been relocated more than once since they originally arrived in Australia. Although under a dozen are known to have survived, four are now on a property owned by Andrew Muir in Collingwood, who has salvaged them from sites across Melbourne where they were to be demolished. He has re-erected three of them and one was in a dismantled state at his property at the time of writing.1 As indicated by its name, the Singapore cottage is part of a family of houses which were ­manufactured in Singapore from materials procured in and around the island colony. This includes larger houses like St.  Ninians in Brighton, believed to have been built in timbers sourced from Singapore,2 and attached timber houses imported by Alexander Fyfe who erected the ‘Singapore Terrace’ in Geelong in 1848.3 For the purposes of this chapter, we shall be exploring the history of small, two or three roomed houses prefabricated in Singapore, which I will call ‘Singapore cottages’ (Figure  11.1). The link to Southeast Asia has been made not only through how the buildings were named and the materials used, but also from records of imports from Singapore. Period advertisements add to the story, for example, W. J. Abraham and Company’s 1853 Melbourne advertisement for two-roomed timber cottages from Singapore that arrived on a ship named the ‘Susan’.4 Period local government rates books offer clues, as they used descriptors such as ‘Singapore’ and ‘Chinese’, suggesting Asian origins. Records of ships’ cargo include prefabricated timber houses from Singapore and elsewhere. Testing of the timber used for the conservation of one of the cottages in Collingwood also strongly suggests Southeast Asian origins.5 More recent connections to Southeast Asia were made when similarities between the joinery of the cottages’ primary structure and those of nineteenth-century timber forts in Sarawak (now in Malaysia) were uncovered.6 Despite their significant role in contributing to Australian colonial development, the cottages remain an understudied example of colonial architecture. This might be due to conventional architectural historiography’s inability or unwillingness to address mobile structures or buildings that lack a sense of permanence.

Fig. 11.1  Top left – ‘A-Star’ Singapore cottage at its Mentone site c. 1960, before it was relocated to Sackville Street, Collingwood. The extension to its right is a local addition (Copyright of the Mordialloc and District Historical Society, reprinted with permission). Top right and bottom row – Singapore cottages in Sackville Street in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood. (Photographs by John Ting.)

Perhaps the cottage makers’ complex origins or misalignment with late nineteenth-century concepts of a white Australia led to their exclusion as contributors to modernization. In order to examine how the cottages’ architecture and construction were produced, and as a way of expanding Australian architectural historiography, I adopt a postcolonial critique to explore who was involved. Timber buildings like the cottages are a special case as their detailing is visible, so that the hands of the makers are not concealed. This is unlike rendering and plastering of the components of Southeast Asian whitewashed masonry buildings which hide the handiwork (and workers) that produced them. Timber joinery and makers’ marks can give us a special insight into who was involved in the production of the cottages’ architecture, and where they were produced. While we have access to four of the cottages at Collingwood, we also acknowledge that they are not whole, and that some of the repairs, reconstructions and recombinations that have been made are not obvious. I also adopt an historical ethnography approach to reconstruct what might have happened, due to the lack of architectural data and lost archival evidence (such as buildings, communications, contracts, specifications, drawings and photographs). Thousands of the timber cottages were manufactured in Singapore in the early nineteenth century from Southeast Asian timber, probably by a number of manufacturers, and many of them were imported to Australia for erection. However, much of their architectural and construction history (including carpentry origins) remains underexplored. This chapter aims to begin to address this gap and starts by reviewing

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architectural research on Singapore cottages in Australia since its first mention by Clare Lewis and Mary Lloyd in 1959, and Alan Willingham’s subsequent discovery of an example in the Melbourne suburb of Mentone in 1985, through to Beeston and Matarredona Desantes’ 2015 exploration.7 It also reviews non-­ architectural mentions of the cottages dating back to the 1840s.8 The chapter will then explore more recent research on the cottages in Australia, before exploring links between the joinery details of the cottages’ primary wall and roof structure to examples in Sarawak, Kalimantan, Penang and Singapore. It concludes by comparing the cottages’ construction with the work of traditional vernacular master carpenters in Fujian, from where many of the Southeast Asian Chinese carpenters came. Before that, this chapter will begin with an examination of the location of the vernacular within the framework of prefabrication as a symbol of modernity.

Colonial prefabrication and vernacular traditions Prefabrication and prefabricated houses are generally considered as the result of modern processes. By the nineteenth century, the production of architecture was no longer limited to locally available materials, skills and labour. The combination of modern industrialized manufacture and shipping networks overcame distance to provide global solutions to local shortages. When we think of prefabricated buildings, we think of revolutionary structures such as the Crystal Palace, the world’s first large, glazed building framed with cast – and wrought-iron. Erected in London in 1851, it used innovative modern methods that efficiently employed mass-produced components to allow construction at unprecedented speed.9 Proximity to the source of raw materials and manufacture was no longer a limitation due to modern communications and transport. This meant that building components could easily be shipped in compact, knocked-down form to any global jurisdiction serviced by colonial shipping networks. From the 1850s, prefabricated cast-iron buildings, such as warehouses, churches, houses and pavilions of various sizes, were imported from metropolitan Britain into underdeveloped far-flung colonies, including Australia.10 Prefabricated building systems were facilitated by modern manufacturing techniques, which allowed for a high degree of accuracy when producing standard components. Prefabricated buildings were not limited to iron – timber was also used in their manufacture. In the 1830s, British companies such as H. Manning were using modern manufacturing methods to produce prefabricated timber ‘Manning houses’.11 These buildings were made from modular components, mechanically mass-produced to relatively tight tolerances and standard sizes that, with included instructions, were designed for quick and easy erection. Manning houses were exported to a developing Australia from the 1840s, as an alternative to local and temporary buildings which were considered inappropriate, and as a result of acute shortages of skilled construction labour and materials.12 Prefabricated architecture is often conflated with modernity. Conservative architectural methodologies conceptualize modern architecture in opposition to vernacular architecture. While modern architecture is new, adaptable, multifaceted, innovative and advanced, vernacular architecture has often been considered as enduring, static and unchanging. This in turn suggests that it should not be adapted to current challenges if it is to remain authentic, and to maintain its architectural purity.13 This oppositional schema is problematic as some vernacular traditions employed prefabricated methodologies to overcome similar problems before the era of modern prefabrication. Traditional mortise and tenon carpentry suited prefabrication as their components could be made and erected in one place before being dismantled, packed and shipped elsewhere to be rebuilt.14 A premodern example of this is the implementation of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, originally erected in Shoreditch in 1576, before being dismantled and transported for erection across the Thames River in 1599.15 Like modern prefabrication approaches, the primary structure of the theatre was fabricated and test erected at a location remote to the site, where materials

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and space were available for this activity, before being dismantled and transported to the small congested urban site for erection. Construction timber was not easily available in London and there was inadequate space to make the frame on site. What was not modern was the way timber was milled in the Middle Ages. In a time before modern sawmilling, timbers were hewn into shape with axes and adzes.16 To reduce double-handling in the time before modern transport, British timber-framed buildings at that time started with carpenters establishing their timber yards adjacent to forests with the appropriate tree species for convenient raw material procurement.17 The joinery methods for the primary structure were based on traditional mortise and tenon approaches to timber framing. As they were fixed with wedges and dowels (and without relying much on expensive nails), they could easily be dismantled, making this form of construction suitable for prefabrication.18 Nineteenth-century prefabricated Singapore cottages can be seen as a part of the modern project that produced the Manning houses discussed above. The higher cost of manufacture in Britain and the expense of shipping prefabricated buildings to Australia made colonies like Singapore an attractive choice for colonial businesses to fabricate houses for expatriate Europeans in other Asian colonies and the new world. Colonial Singapore had access to appropriate materials and commanded cheap, skilled labour, which reduced manufacturing costs. Singapore’s proximity to antipodean and Pacific colonies reduced the cost of transport and contributed to the lower cost of the houses when compared with British-produced examples. For Australia, prefabricated houses were imported on an industrial scale to overcome shortages. In 1853 alone, 15,960 portable houses (worth GBP244,381 at the time) were imported into Melbourne, with slightly more than half the value of imports coming from Great Britain, and a large proportion of the remainder suspected or known to be from Singapore.19 This suggests that thousands of Singapore cottages might have been imported into Australia. The Manning houses mentioned above can be considered as thoroughly modern as they were a new solution to a new problem, where the advanced industrialized methods of the metropolis overcame primitive conditions in the colonies. The production of the Singapore cottages, however, is not as clear-cut conceptually, as they demonstrate a combination of modern and vernacular approaches. Like Manning houses, Singapore cottages are uncomplicated planimetric rectangles with simple interiors, to simplify fabrication and erection, as well as forming the base for straightforward roof arrangements. The labour that produced Manning houses was trained to use modern industrial machinery, replacing traditional construction skills. The production of Singapore cottages employed modern labour practices as regional colonial networks were used to procure workers. However, Singapore cottages contrast with Manning houses as the design and construction of the primary structure demonstrate the contribution of colonized groups. The extant examples’ roof structure have mortise holes about half-way up the king posts, which suggests that they were fabricated for the use of an alang muda tunjjuk langit (or an intermediate roof beam, Figure  11.2, left) that is common in traditional Malay roof construction.20 The primary wall and floor structures of extant and historical examples often have Chinese characters written near the member ends. It has been said that the carpentry of the main frames have Chinese origins; in particular the crossed top plates and bottom plates, which have the corner posts mortised into them (Figure 11.2, middle and right), and the hand-in-hand scarf joints connecting top or bottom plates in-line, from which posts are mortised into.21 The cottages’ timber connections were handmade rather than machine manufactured. With one-off buildings, such as the Globe Theatre in Shoreditch, members of the same type were not always interchangeable with other locations within the frame if a tight, gap-free connection were to be maintained. Connections at each location were considered individual and were unique and specific to that location. However, as Singapore cottages were produced on an industrial scale, the primary timber structural sizes

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Fig. 11.2  Intermediate roof beam and crossed top and bottom plates at the ‘N4’ Singapore cottage, Sackville Street, Collingwood. Left: the intermediate roof beam is visible halfway up the king posts. Middle: crossed bottom plates are protected by a metal strap and a quarter-circle section of timber in the crook of the crossed bottom plates. Right: crossed top plates are visible under the hip rafter. (Photographs by John Ting.)

and connections were standardized. The restoration works on the Collingwood cottages have demonstrated that there was enough standardization so that members of the same series of cottages are largely interchangeable. The contribution of Malays and Chinese to the design and construction of the cottages’ primary structure accords with the labour profile of colonies like Singapore at that time. While the colony employed Malay sojourners from elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the area around Singapore had operated as a precolonial entrepot. This suited the island’s adoption as a distribution centre for colonial labour to other Southeast Asian British and Dutch colonies. Like Penang before it, Singapore was also a port on colonial shipping networks where Chinese sojourners landed and looked for opportunities, either in the colony or onward at other Southeast Asian centres. Furthermore, the construction system of the cottages was not universally understood, and it required a Chinese carpenter, who was involved in its Southeast Asian production, to accompany shipments in order to facilitate their erection.22 Before we explore the origins of the cottages’ carpentry, we need to work backwards from what is known by establishing the history of Singapore cottages in Australia through existing research and selected extant examples. We can then explore the extent of this construction system in Southeast Asia, before comparing it with contemporaneous vernacular timber architecture in Southeast China, in particular Fujian, from where many diasporic Chinese carpenters came in the nineteenth century.

Singapore cottages in Collingwood There are three different families of literature on the cottages. The first family is not specifically architectural but includes information on Singapore cottages as part of a larger historical or biographical narrative, including Hugh McCrae’s Georgiana’s Journal. The second family is architectural research that was done on prefabricated buildings in Australia (and elsewhere) before the discovery of extant cottages, and the third is primary research on extant (and related) examples of cottages in Victoria upon their discovery and associated with heritage and conservation processes.

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The earliest known mention of Singapore cottages is in the 1837 diary entry of a Captain King, where he refers to a Singapore house, followed by an 1844 reference to St. Ninians, an extant 1839 house built of ‘Singapore teak’.23 While not much is known of the construction of these two houses, the description of a Singapore cottage in Georgiana McCrae’s 1840s journal is more telling.24 While not an architectural text, its house descriptions have been useful for early research on the Singapore cottage as a family of prefabricated houses imported into Melbourne.25 Georgiana’s Journal was edited and historically contextualized in 1934 by Hugh McCrae, Georgiana’s grandson.26 The Little Lonsdale Street house which Georgiana and family rented on arrival in Melbourne in 1841 was known as ‘Singapore Cottage’. Erected before they arrived, it was so-called as it came from Singapore.27 In his 1912 recollections of the 1840s, published in the Victorian Historical Magazine, George McCrae (Georgiana’s son) said their house was ‘one of a number brought over in pieces from Singapore’, indicating prefabrication and shipped in dismantled form to Melbourne for erection.28 Gerogiana’s Journal describes the house as having half-inch (12.7 mm) thick timber wall and ceiling cladding, with a ‘tolerably large’ living room and four small bedrooms running off it.29 George’s drawing of their cottage shows a rectangular single-storey building with a gable roof and front door along the long side, where the living room might have been located.30 This implies two bedrooms at each end of the house. Renamed ‘Argyle Cottage’ after the name of the ship that brought the McCrae family to Australia in 1841, it was demolished before an architectural assessment, but a 1915 photograph shows the house still standing at that time.31 Hugh’s largely uncited editorial and contextualization is an important link to the primary material and has been used in architectural research on Singapore cottages and portable buildings more generally. He mentions that portable houses were used to address Melbourne’s housing shortage, and that they were sold through weekly Melbourne newspaper advertisements during the 1840s.32 His editorial gives us a historical picture of the morphology and development of Melbourne from 1841, including information from 1840s to 1930s sources. These include The Victorian Historical Magazine and his family’s unpublished letters and oral history, and period commentary on these issues. What we cannot tell from McCraes’ publications is the prefabricated construction system of Argyle Cottage. Early architectural research on the Singapore cottages began to unveil important information. Clare Lewis and Mary Lloyd’s 1959 Bachelor of Architecture thesis, Portable Buildings, investigated prefabricated steel buildings, but there is a small section on Singapore timber houses. Argyle Cottage was mentioned, as well as two-storey examples brought out by Alexander Fyfe and erected in Geelong, but construction details were not explored, due to the lack of architectural data and extant examples being unknown then.33 J.M. Freeland, in Architecture in Australia (1968), discussing prefabrication as a response to the 1851 Victorian gold rush, wrote that prefabricated timber buildings from Singapore (and America) were imported into Victoria, whereby the components were identified from a ‘code of numbers and letters’, to aid specific assembly processes.34 In 1971, Professor of Architecture at the University of Melbourne, Brian Lewis (father of Clare) briefly touched on Singapore cottages in The Asian Touch in Building, and the involvement of Chinese carpenters evinced by Chinese characters found on some prefabricated timber house members. The Hemisphere magazine article explored the Asian contribution to architecture and construction in Australia from the 1850s, including prefabricated houses from China, India and Singapore.35 It outlined the architecture of the Chinese diaspora in Australia rather than focussing on an architectural analysis, as Hemisphere was for a generalist audience to promote Asian/Australian relationships.36 This article did have some influence on subsequent research. David Kohl’s Chinese Architecture in the Straits Settlements and Western Malaya (1984) conflated Brian’s article with the cottages being of European design and manufactured in factories in Singapore. While a reasonable hypothesis, it is not stated as such, and no evidence is provided. Furthermore, neither the factories nor the designers’ ethnicities were

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mentioned by Lewis. Kohl’s hypothesis was adopted by Jaques Dumarcay in The House in South-east Asia (1997) – and while Kohl’s book appears in Dumarcay’s bibliography, there is no further citation. In 2015, Dumarcay’s hypothesis was again adopted, by Beeston and Matarredona Desantes.37 In contrast to Kohl and Dumarcay, mentions of Singapore cottages in Gilbert Herbert’s 1972 article, The Portable Colonial Cottage, do not reference Lewis. Gilbert Herbert’s article, which is a history of prefabricated timber houses in Australia and other British colonies, explores British manufacturers such as Manning and Thompson, but also acknowledges that portable timber houses also originated outside of Britain. The design, detailing, joinery, construction system, manufacture and shipping of the timber Manning prefabricated houses were well known due to extant Australian examples, published illustrated instructions on the erection and the records of the builders who erected them. While lacking the same detail afforded to the Manning houses, the article cites advertisements for ‘Singapore houses’, ranging in size from 22’ × 11’ (6.7 m × 3.35 m) to 30’ × 24’ (9.1 m × 7.3 m) in the Melbourne Argus and Gazette newspapers.38 The first article dedicated to the architecture of the Singapore cottages was Miles Lewis’ The Singapore Cottage (1981).39 The son of Brian Lewis, Miles brought together the known information above, expanded on known examples of Singapore cottages, as well as revealing the scale and numbers of cottages imported into Victoria. Related historical research revealed the existence of Chinese characters on some components of demolished timber prefabricated houses.40 More archival research on Singapore cottage advertisements was undertaken, revealing additional details about the houses imported, and historical research was contextualized architecturally. Further Singapore cottage mentions were uncovered, although surviving specimens were elusive. The industrial scale and broad origins of prefabricated imports became known. While knowledge on the Singapore cottages was building, little was known about the cottages’ built fabric and prefabrication methods. Physical examples were lacking, thereby preventing the forensic architectural and conservation research of the cottage fabric. The situation was soon to change. In The Diagnosis of Prefabricated Building (1985), Miles reported the discovery of a timber framed weatherboard house at 37 Warrigal Road in the Melbourne suburb of Mentone (Figure 11.1, top left), presumed to have come from Singapore in the 1850s.41 The cladding’s demolition revealed Chinese characters on its structural timber members, suggesting fabrication by carpenters of Chinese origin. The house became known as ‘A-Star’, due to a brand on many members having the letter ‘A’ followed by four chevrons arranged in a star pattern.42 Alan Willingham saved the building from further demolition by organizing for Andrew Muir to take possession and transport it to his property at Sackville Street, Collingwood in 1984.43 The cottage was 44’ × 22’ (13.4 m × 6.7 m). It had a central corridor across its short dimension, with two rooms of equal size on either side of the corridor. While the house was altered and extended several times at Mentone, only the original cottage was relocated. The house’s original hip roof structure and cladding were dismantled prior to transport, but the remainder of the building was relocated whole by truck.44 The house’s conservation analysis included the house owners’ oral history, establishing the origins of the building in Melbourne. A descendant of John Harkins, the original owner of the house at Mentone, revealed that it was bought at auction from a site somewhere in Collingwood (now part of East Melbourne) in 1899 which was to be cleared for a new train line.45 An 1899 railways map shows the properties affected by the proposed train line.46 The house’s location was ascertained by bringing together the timber construction and 44’ × 22’ (13.4 m × 6.7 m) dimensions of the house with Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) property maps, which included scaled building footprints. Council rate books noted the house as having timber construction and being named a ‘Singapore cottage’.47 Once the house’s location was known, council Notices of Intent to Build show it was first erected in 1853 by Charles Featherstone Griffin.48

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There is no record of where Griffin acquired the cottage, but there were advertisements for timber houses that arrived on ships from Singapore in the Melbourne Auction Mart newspaper in the same year, although not for the 44’ × 22’ (13.4 m × 6.7 m) ‘A-Star’ dimensions.49 The MMBW maps show the house had an extension, likely a kitchen. The building, without the extension, was relocated to Mentone in 1899.50 No other documentary evidence was discovered as to the house’s origins, its architecture or construction. However, a forensic inspection of the surviving structure and fabric, including the primary roof, walls and floor structure, the secondary structure (such as rafters, floor joists and smaller section wall posts), the floorboards, weatherboards and roof cladding, revealed much about its origins. Testing confirmed the Malay Peninsula origins of the primary structural frame and some of the flooring, floor joists, timber cladding and roof rafters.51 While the house’s galvanized roof tiles are known to be imported, the battens and some of the rafters are of Australian origin.52 Muir later acquired three more cottages with stronger links to Singapore. In 1993, a house for sale at 2 Henry Street, Windsor was salvaged by Muir. It came to be known as the ‘N6’ Singapore cottage, due to the serial code ‘N6’ being found on its main timber structure (Figure 11.1, top right).53 In 1995, a cottage with the serial code ‘N4’ marked on its main timber structure was discovered at 36 Longmore Street, St. Kilda (Figure 11.1, bottom right).54 The final cottage is known as ‘R, T, CX and KS’ as it was constructed of components from four incomplete cottages with those serial codes (Figure 11.1, bottom left).55 While N4 and N6 were heavily altered and added to, the structural carpentry details of both houses are the same as A-Star. The ‘R, T, CX and KS’ cottage is also similar. Unlike A-Star, N4 and N6’s sizes are 30’ × 20’ (9.1 m × 6.1 m), matching the dimensions in 1853 Auction Mart advertisements. Their plan arrangements match A-Star’s and the Auction Mart descriptions.56 N4 and N6 have been erected in Collingwood. In 2002, A-Star was carefully studied and dismantled without further damaging its components. It was safely packed away in a shed on the same site, and N4 was erected in its place (Figure 11.1, top right).57 N6 (under construction in Figure 11.1, bottom right) was erected at 125 Easey Street in 2017.58 N4 and N6 were not complete examples when salvaged, with some components reclaimed from other Melbourne N-series cottages to facilitate completion. N6 was built at 2 Henry Street between 1850 and 1855.59 Many Singapore cottages were imported into Melbourne around this time, suggesting N6 was erected for the first time in Windsor. Between the time of its erection and 1993, it was heavily altered and added to internally and externally, although the original hip roof was not changed. Some of the original cladding boards remained as well as parts of the fenestration joinery.60 In 1993, what were believed to be the components of the original cottage were dismantled and salvaged by Muir and transported to storage at Collingwood before its 2017 re-erection.61 N6 was more complete than N4, but was still missing components. Muir augmented the missing parts with components serial coded N5, salvaged from River Street South Yarra in 1986. Other parts were fabricated from unmarked components found with N5. At Longmore Street, N4 was believed to be erected together with its twin next door.62 This is supported by the acquisition of Singapore cottage timber components from Echuca, Victoria, thought to have come from 38 Longmore Street.63 In 1996, Willingham suggested that Longmore Street may have been the second location of the house, bought at auction as its site was being redeveloped and transported to a new location.64 In 1996, Muir salvaged the cottage when the property was sold for redevelopment.65 N4 was not a complete cottage, with only the main frame and some of the cladding remaining.66 Muir dismantled the building and transported it to Sackville Street for erection. While we do not know if N4 had been erected for the first time in St. Kilda, its components and dimensions are the same as N5 and N6, suggesting that they were prefabricated contemporaneously at the same facility. Muir used other Singapore cottage components, which he had, to complete N4.67 As N4’s roof structure was missing,

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these components were copied from a 30’ × 20’ (9.1 m × 6.1 m) Singapore cottage at 17 Coventry Place, South Melbourne.68 This experience with the N-series cottages allowed for the sequence of construction to be established. The ‘R, T, CX and KS’ cottage (Figure 11.1, bottom left) is smaller than the others, having three rooms (one main room from the entry and two smaller rooms at one end of the house). It contrasts with the other cottages by having a gable roof (rather than a hip) and a brick floor (rather than an elevated timber one), mimicking what was found at the original location.69 It was erected in 2004 at 136 Sackville Street. The components for this cottage were salvaged from outbuildings at the rear of a row of four iron houses at 189 Brunswick Road, Brunswick (in Melbourne). With permission, Muir salvaged the timber cottage components and bricks left on the site in 1987, 1993 and 1995. The large-corrugation galvanized roof sheets were salvaged around 2001. The cottage did not use all of the parts that were salvaged, and spares are stored in Collingwood.70 The cottage now has the large-corrugation galvanized iron roofing laid across the rafters. When it was first erected, Muir clad the roof with canvas, as canvas roofs were known to be used in the 1830s. He was exploring how period canvas roofs might have been fixed and waterproofed. While we know that fabrics like oilcloth were used for temporary roofing on prefabricated houses in mid-nineteenth century Australia, little is known about the fixing details.71 The four Collingwood cottages discussed above have differences in the roof, wall and floor cladding and fenestration, with some timber components being identified as of Southeast Asian origin, while others are from Australia. Some elements of Southeast Asian origin, such as A-Star’s weatherboards, are suspected to have been designed as vertical cladding but installed horizontally in an Australian manner.72 Secondary structure (like floor joists and roof rafters) could have mixed origins.73 However, their primary structure demonstrates many similarities, the five main ones being the unique details in the roof framing, the required sequence of construction, geographical origins of the timbers, the markings on the primary members and the joinery details of the primary floor and wall framing. Although the dismantled A-Star and two of the restored cottages have hip roofs and the ‘R, T, CX and KS’ cottage has a gable, the crossed top plates and primary king post roof structure are similar across all four cottages.74 The king posts of the restored cottages are square and similar in size to the cross beams, into which they are mortised. The ridge beam is mortised into tenons at the tops of the king posts. About halfway up each king post, there are mortise holes, which Miles Lewis suggests were for an intermediate roof beam common in traditional Malay roof construction, called an alang muda tunjjuk langit.75 This implies the involvement of Malay carpenters. The cottages’ primary floor, wall and roof structure are heavy timber frames, generally square in section, composed of near-identical horizontal frames at floor level and at the tops of the walls, with the main posts between them; the entire assembly being supported on stumps. As demonstrated by Muir when he restored N6’s primary frame, the cottages’ primary structure was constructed in layers from the bottom up. The stumps were the first layer to be built, and bottom plates and cross beams were the second layer, assembled over the first. The third layer was the main posts and vertical secondary structure mortised into the top and bottom plates and cross beams (such as the studs and fenestration’s jamb studs), over which the fourth layer (the top plates and cross beams) was installed. The final layer built was the primary structure of the roof, after which the rest of the secondary structure was constructed. The four cottages’ primary structures all share timbers of Southeast Asian origin, and Chinese characters are evident on their primary structural elements.76 These members have nail-less traditional carpentry joints. The perimeter top and bottom plates cross and are mortised into each other above the stumps or posts at the corners and are connected along their length with hooked scarfs mortised into the posts between the floor and top of the walls. Cross beams are dove-tailed into the top and bottom plates. These

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details can clearly be seen on the three restored cottages and the dismantled one.77 Based on the primary structures’ Chinese characters, and on Singapore being a hub for Chinese sojourners in the nineteenth century, Sands and Span-Keeble’s A-Star and N6 conservation reports hypothesize that these carpentry details are traditional Chinese, Japanese or Asian joinery techniques fabricated by carpenters from China.78 As China is a diverse country with many different carpentry traditions, these hypotheses lack specificity and have not yet been thoroughly interrogated. Singapore’s nineteenth-century Chinese carpenters were mainly from Guangdong and Fujian in Southeast China, which narrows down the geographical scope of the carpentry’s origins. The paucity of Anglophone research on Guangdong and Fujian vernacular architecture and carpentry practices, and the rarity of Chinese language researchers who also publish in English on these topics has made research on the cottages’ carpentry origins difficult. No new information on the origins of the cottages’ carpentry has emerged from research on the Australian examples since Span-Keeble’s 1993 hypothesis. Australian efforts since the 1990s to uncover more information in Singapore have not yielded results. Willingham’s 1994 Singapore research trip included a public request for information in a Singapore daily newspaper but did not yield results.79 Perhaps his quest was not helped by the narrow focus of Singapore’s vernacular architecture research on traditional Malay houses, masonry shophouses and colonial bungalows. That the cottages were not used in their place of manufacture did not help. Willingham’s search may have been too general, searching for information on the cottages as an architecture and a product, rather than a construction system. Recent investigations into specific joinery details have been more fruitful. In 2009, Miles Lewis noted that the crossed top plates and scarf joints above posts in nineteenth-century timber forts in Sarawak resembled the ones on the Singapore cottages.80 The cottages’ Malay intermediate roof beam was also observed in the forts’ roof structures. Lewis’s insights made possible the research of the cottages’ main frame and roof structure from outside Australia for the first time, and began an investigation by others (including myself) into the extent and longevity of this carpentry practice in Southeast Asia.

Chinese carpenters in Southeast Asia In Sarawak, crossed top plates, hand-in-hand scarfs and intermediate roof beams can be observed on all of the eleven extant nineteenth- and early twentieth-century timber government forts, such as Fort Alice in Simanggang (Figure 11.3). Crossed top plates and hand-in-hand scarfs have also been observed on different non-government timber building types, including houses and schools, but also in the renovation and reconstruction of Indigenous longhouses.81 My recent study of timber shophouses in Sarawak shows that crossed top plates and hand-in-hand scarfs were used in buildings implemented as late as the 1950s.82 Those wall details have since been observed in timber buildings from Brunei to Kalimantan, from modest building types such as everyday domestic and commercial buildings, to mosques and palaces such as the Istana in Pontianak and the Sultan Syarif Abdurrahman Mosque in the same city.83 The Singapore cottages have a number of similarities and differences with the forts. Firstly, both the forts and the cottages are primarily timber buildings that have square-section, heavy timber, primary structure, and share some key joinery details in their primary structure or main frame. They both have crossed top plates mortised onto tenons at the top of corner structure, hooked scarfs to connect in-line top plates, also mortised onto the tops of vertical structure, and intermediate roof beams mortised into the roof’s king posts. The forts are considerably larger than the cottages, with the main part of Fort Alice (27 m × 11 m) being some six times larger than the N–series cottages. While the cottages have one set of top plates around the perimeter, the forts have two sets – one at the perimeter, and a second ring offset around 3m from the outside of the building – meaning that the width of the inside set of top plates is closer to 6m,

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Fig. 11.3  Fort Alice in Simanggang, Sarawak in 2014, during its conservation and restoration, with a drawing of crossed top plates. (Photographs and drawing by John Ting.)

which is comparable to the cottages, although the forts’ length is more than double that of the cottages. The fort’s intermediate roof beams are used to support or align collar ties for the rafters. The cottages’ rafters might not have required collar ties due to having rafters with larger sections. Perhaps the cottages’ king post mortise holes and the intermediate roof beams were installed as a matter of course whether collar ties were required or not, or, as Mile Lewis suggests, the intermediate roof beams provided stability for the king posts while the roof was being assembled.84 The main difference is that the forts do not use crossed bottom plates as they employ pile construction, whereas the cottages’ crossed bottom plates are supported by stumps. Timber pile construction was also common to nineteenth-century Indigenous approaches to structure in Sarawak. Secondly, the forts’ primary structure was prefabricated in the capital, Kuching, before it was shipped to the site for erection. This was true for the standard designs of the second generation of forts (1862–75), such as the ones built at Bintulu, Mukah, Sibu and Baleh.85 Examples of both the forts and the cottages have been fully dismantled to test this system. All four of Muir’s Collingwood cottages have been dismantled, either for transport or for storage. Fort Alice was originally erected at Skrang in 1849 before being dismantled and transported to Simanggang.86 The fort’s ability to be dismantled was verified in its 2016 conservation and  restoration, where the entire building was able to be dismantled without any adverse impact on the primary structure’s connections. Damaged or deteriorated elements were then repaired or replaced, and the fort re-erected.87 As with the Singapore cottages, the carpenters who fabricated the structural frame for the second generation Sarawak forts, or who were familiar with the carpentry system,

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accompanied dismantled frames to their destination to facilitate its erection.88 Like the cottages, this suggests that carpenters familiar with the system were required because the primary structure’s construction system was not one that was well known in Sarawak. The difference between the forts and the cottages was that only the forts’ primary structure was prefabricated and shipped. Their secondary structure, such as floor joists and roof rafters, and the wall and roof cladding, was procured at the site, whereas in the case of the cottages, these elements were all supplied with the knocked down package from Singapore. Thirdly, the carpenters of the forts and cottages included sojourners from China, most likely from Fujian or Guangdong province. While this is suggested by the Chinese characters on many of the cottages, colonial Singapore in the nineteenth century (and Penang before it) was a regional distribution centre for Chinese migrants seeking work. An example is Louis Ah Mouy, who left Guangdong to look for work in Singapore, where he learnt to be a carpenter.89 In 1851, he was contracted to ship’s captain Glendenning, who brought six cottages to Melbourne, where Ah Mouy supervised their erection in South Melbourne and Williamstown.90 This implies he was involved in these cottages’ fabrication in Singapore. Like many other migrants from China, he later settled in Australia.91 In the case of the forts, the carpenters, in the employ of the government, usually returned to Kuching after the forts were erected. While Kuching had a sufficient number of carpenters, the remainder of the state had a general shortage of carpenters from the mid-nineteenth century and up to the mid-twentieth century. This saw gangs of carpenters travel from town to town to implement buildings, with the clients, including the government, often having to wait considerable periods for construction of their buildings to be completed.92 Both the forts and the cottages required local labour to assist the carpenters to erect the buildings, as the timber members on both types were too heavy to be lifted into place by one or two people. While the forts and the cottages’ primary structure and carpenters have Singapore in common, Miles Lewis and my separate efforts with architectural historians of colonial Singapore and the Malay peninsula to extend this research beyond Australia and Sarawak did not reveal any new information about the cottages.93 As it turns out, examples of crossed top plates have been hiding in plain sight. By chance, I came across a photograph of the crossed top plates of a 1908 ‘black-and-white’ government house called ‘Lewin Terrace’ in Singapore on a colleague’s social media page.94 Further investigation revealed that it is a single-storey house elevated on masonry piers and walls. Its construction is similar to a house called ‘Atbara’ (1898) at 5 Gallop Road, Singapore, a restored black-and-white within the grounds of the Singapore Botanical Gardens (Figure  11.4).95 The main floor is timber construction. Like the cottages, crossed bottom plates are used (Figure 11.4), and like the cottages and forts, it employs crossed top plates. Similar to the cottages, the balcony’s timber structure does not make contact with the earth, with stumps supporting the cottages and rendered piers for ‘Atbara’. The forts’ timber pile construction is different as its footings are contiguous with its posts, from where they are founded in the ground up to the top plates. Black-and-white (or ‘Mock Tudor’) house architecture in Singapore was favoured by the formally trained architects of the Public Works Department from the turn of the twentieth century until the Second World War,96 although private companies also commissioned them for their senior staff.97 Many, like ‘Atbara’ and Lewin Terrace, survive to the current day and crossed top plates or crossed top and bottom plates are evident. For example, crossed top and bottom plates are evident at 6 Goodwood Hill’s front balcony.98 With some of these houses, the timber columns and crossed bottom plates have been replaced with masonry and reinforced concrete. These include the front balcony at 33 Malcolm Road, ‘Inverturret’ (7 Gallop Road, Figure 11.4) and 22 Bukit Chermin Road.99 Crossed top and bottom plates are known to be used in various vernacular architect-designed nineteenth century Singapore houses, for example the ‘Balaclava’ (1880),100 and ‘Joyville’ at 43 Highland Road.101 That those details exist on buildings designed by both formally and

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Fig. 11.4  Top: ‘Inverturret’ (1902) and ‘Atabara’ (1898) at Gallop Road Singapore. Bottom left: crossed top plates and bottom plates at Atbara. Bottom right: crossed top plates at Inverturret. (Photographs by John Ting.)

informally trained architects suggests that these details were decided upon by the carpenters building those houses, rather than detailed by the designers. An investigation of photographs in architectural history publications of colonial Penang gives us a further insight into the extent of the use of crossed top and bottom plates. They are evident on the first-floor front balcony in early photographs of ‘The Aloes’.102 This suggests that they have been used at least since the early nineteenth century (when the house is believed to have been built). They can also be seen on the  first-floor front balcony of the mid-nineteenth-century Penang Chinese Merchants’ Clubhouse.103 In both examples, the timber first floors were supported by masonry structure. Crossed top plates were still used in Penang in 1926, in ‘Moy Craig’, a house designed by Singapore architects Swan and Maclaren.104 The fact that these details were also used by Penang carpenters implies that the details originate there rather than Singapore, as Penang was colonized in 1786. As Singapore was a new colony, occupied in 1819, building materials and construction labour were supplied by the established British colonies of Penang and Malacca.105 We also know that the builders (and construction labour) of those Singapore and Penang houses were primarily Chinese, as well as those two colonies being distribution points for migrant labour from China.

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However, both colonies had extant Malay populations when they were occupied by the British and were centres towards which Malay labour from elsewhere in Southeast Asia gravitated for employment during the colonial period. While the intermediate roof beams of the cottages and forts suggest their involvement, construction teams were mixed, so there was a possible exchange of approaches at this time. Chinese carpenters were involved in the fabrication of the cottages and other buildings in Singapore, Penang and Sarawak, and hand-in-hand scarf and crossed top and bottom plate details have been said to be Chinese. These details, however, are used by many other groups, including Malays and other Austronesian groups, as well as in many European places. To ascertain Chinese origins for these details, we need to look more closely at China’s classical and vernacular construction at the time when many migrants from China were arriving in Southeast Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Vernacular architecture in Fujian A review of construction detailing images in the twelfth-century classical Chinese government building manual the Yingzao Fashi did not reveal the use of hand-in-hand scarfs and top and bottom plates as we find in the cottages, so perhaps these joinery techniques are not generalizable to the vernacular carpentry traditions of Fujian and Guangdong, from which many of Southeast Asia’s Chinese carpenters originated. Two recent publications on Fujian’s vernacular architecture are of interest: Qing Hua Guo and Yuyu Zhang’s 2016 book, The Weiwu at Dafushen: Unseen Details of the Chinese Vernacular and Yuyu Zhang’s 2010 book Studies on the Craftsmanship of Traditional Chinese carpenters in the Fujian Region, written in Chinese.106 In comparing the vernacular architecture and carpentry of the Fujian typologies studied by Guo and Zhang to our Southeast Asian examples, a few things are evident. There are no hand-in-hand scarfs or crossed top and bottom plates in weiwu, a pervasive communal domestic building in Fujian, designed and constructed by vernacular master carpenters. In fact, there are more differences than similarities and three in particular stand out. First is the use of round timbers in the weiwu – round timbers, such as purlins, rafters and columns are shown in the Yingzao Fashi, and carpenters in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China habitually used them over square – or rectangular-section timbers, even where specified by Western architects in China’s treaty ports.107 In contrast to the Fujian examples, the cottages’ (and related Sarawak, Penang and Singapore buildings) timbers are always square. It is only traditional Chinese institutional building types in Southeast Asia that occasionally use round timbers, for example the Wak Hai Cheng Bo temple and Liang Shan Shuang Lin monastery in Singapore, and this is due to their construction or conservation by traditional master builders who were invited from China to do the works.108 Secondly, the construction system of the cottages and vernacular Fujian carpentry fundamentally contrast with each other. Whereas the construction process of the cottages is by stacking horizontal structural layers from the bottom up (as described above), the weiwu are built in arranging vertical layers. Weiwu (and other traditional architectural types in Fujian, such as temples) are made out of bracketed portal frames fabricated flat on the building’s stone plinth floor before being tilted up with ropes one by one and propped in place. Purlins are then laid across the tops of the portals, stabilizing the portals longitudinally.109 Third, the master carpenters of Fujian’s traditional institutional architecture typologies are unlikely to have migrated to Southeast Asia and beyond in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, due to consistent patronage by institutional and private clients. Chinese sojourners at that time were unlikely to be master carpenters, if they were carpenters at all. We know, as previously discussed, Louis Ah Mouy, who accompanied flat-packed Singapore cottages to Melbourne in 1851, received his carpentry training in Singapore, not China. He, and tens of thousands of others, left China in the early nineteenth century to look for work in Southeast Asia as their homeland was in a state of economic turmoil, and making a living was difficult.110

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Yuyu Zhang’s research suggests that, despite dire economic conditions, traditionally trained master carpenters (in the nineteenth century and up to the present day) were well supported by private and institutional patrons.111 This continuing patronage implies that they were less likely to migrate from China when compared with others who left the country seeking work. Supporting this idea is the fact that master carpenters and master builders did not reside in Southeast Asia. When commissioned by Southeast Asian clients from the nineteenth century for institutional and public building such as temples and shrines, they tended to return to China after overseas projects were completed, rather than continue in new jurisdictions. This is related to how master carpenters’ organizations were arranged.112 The management tier was led by the master carpenters, who were the individuals sought out by the patrons. In addition to preparing the designs and drawings, master carpenters also procured all of the materials and labour and made and provided all of the carpentry tools required for construction. Next in line were the apprentice master carpenters, usually but not necessarily their sons or blood relatives, who took over when the master carpenter stopped building. At the bottom of the management tier were the foremen, who managed the workers and answered to the apprentices and the masters. In the tier below were the ordinary carpenters and the unskilled workers who did most of the work using tools and materials that were supplied to them. I argue that it was these ordinary carpenters and unskilled workers who were most likely migrated as they were the first ones to be laid off if things got bad, as happened in mid-nineteenth-century China, and they were also at a level in the hierarchy which made promotion to higher positions unlikely. If it was not people from the management tier that left China, then it was those who were not necessarily trained in traditional Chinese carpentry, namely the workers who had an aptitude for less-skilled carpentry tasks, or who were unskilled labour. This suggests that hand-in-hand scarfs and crossed top and bottom plates are not a Chinese tradition, and while their carpenters may have been from China, they did not necessarily learn their carpentry in their homeland.

Conclusion The Singapore cottages are a significant architectural type as they were imported to the Australian colony of Victoria in their thousands in the nineteenth century and scaffolded colonial development there by contributing significantly to housing and labour shortages. This chapter has expanded the knowledge base of the architectural history of these buildings by drawing links between extant Australian examples and surviving contemporaneous buildings in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia that have the same timber joinery details. This has been facilitated by expanding conservative architectural history methodologies beyond traditional classifications and limiting notions of permanence. The cottages cannot be simply seen as a case of modern systems overcoming the problem of underdeveloped colonies, nor are the cottages simply examples of one vernacular approach to structure, construction and timber procurement. The architecture of the cottages, then, is complex, and considering them using an oppositional or binary conceptual framework is problematic. This chapter has shown the inadequacies of classifying them as either modern or vernacular, or of one vernacular tradition or another, or of conflating the handiwork of a migrant group with that of their homeland. Instead, it demonstrates that there is an interrelationship between the two. Perhaps its lack of purity, as either vernacular or modern, or lack of a singular vernacular tradition, or because they are mobile, and not locked to a place, that has made it difficult to classify the cottages according to conservative architectural categories. However, as an example of the transfer of knowledge and technology from colonized to colonizer, and a demonstration of the major contribution of colonized groups to colonial prefabrication, the history of the production of the architecture of the cottages demonstrates the productivity of architectural historiography when it is expanded beyond its conservative base.

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We know that the Singapore cottages in Australia, as well as many buildings with timber sections in Singapore, and the forts and many other timber building types in Borneo were built by Chinese carpenters. However, the origins of their carpentry details, in particular the hand-in-hand scarfs and top and bottom plates contrast in many ways to Chinese traditions and remain unknown. What is clear is that the hypothesis of Sands and Span–Keeble, of the Chinese origins of those details, is unlikely to be proven. Furthermore, Guo, Zhang and Yeo have demonstrated the value of traditional master carpenters in China, which supports the idea that it is doubtful whether Chinese master carpenters emigrated in the nineteenth century, and nor is it likely that Southeast Asian Chinese immigrants had traditional vernacular carpentry training. More research on the vernacular carpentry of Fujian and Guangdong is needed, but what this chapter suggests is that the carpentry details (and Chinese markings) of the Singapore cottages and other buildings we have considered might originate from Southeast Asia rather than from China.

Acknowledgements This research could not have been completed without the contribution and collaboration of Andrew Muir, who has not only provided access to his Singapore cottages but has been generous in sharing his knowledge on the topic. I also wish to thank Miles Lewis, without which the scope of this work would not have made it out of Australia.

Notes 1. Portable Buildings World Heritage Nomination Task Force, ‘Portable Buildings of the Nineteenth Century: A Proposal for World Heritage Listing’, 2021, 11 and 15–16. 2. Miles Lewis, ‘The Portable House’, in The History and Design of the Australian House, ed. Robert Irving (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985), 277. 3. Lewis, Clare and Mary Lloyd, ‘Portable Buildings’ (The University of Melbourne, 1959), 5. 4. Miles Lewis, ‘The Asian Trade in Portable Buildings’, Fabrications: The Journal of the SAHANZ, 4, no. 1 (1993): 36. 5. Robert Sands, ‘Pre–Fabricated Cottage, 136 Sackville Street, Collingwood: Conservation Analysis’ (Melbourne: State Historic Buildings Council, 1987), 21. 6. Miles Lewis, May 2009 Personal Communications and John Ting, ‘Precarious Power, Forts and Outstations: Indigenisation, Institutional Architecture and Settlement Patterns in Sarawak, 1841–1917’ (University of Melbourne, 2015). 7. Lewis and Lloyd, Portable Buildings, Miles Lewis, ‘The Diagnosis of Prefabricated Buildings’, Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology 3 (1985); Miles Lewis, ‘Miles Lewis to Andrew Muir Regards Singapore Cottage from Brunswick’ (Melbourne, 2006); Roger Beeston and Nuria Matarredona Desantes, ‘Adapting Vernacular Architecture: The Case of the Singapore Cottage in Melbourne’, in Vernacular Architecture: Towards a Sustainable Future, ed. C. Mileto, F. Vegas, L. Garcia Soriano and C. Cristini (London: CRC Press, 2015). 8. Georgiana McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal: Melbourne 1841–1865, ed. Hugh McCrae, 1st Edition (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1934). 9. Folke T. Kihlstedt, ‘The Crystal Palace’, Scientific American, 251, no. 4 (1984): 132–3. 10. Lewis, ‘Diagnosis of Prefabricated Buildings’, 60–1. 11. Gilbert Herbert, ‘The Portable Colonial Cottage’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 31, no. 4 (1972): 261. 12. McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal, 120, Herbert, Portable Colonial Cottage, 261 and 266.

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13. Dell Upton, ‘The Tradition of Change’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 5, no. 1 (1993): 14; Marcel Vellinga, ‘Imagining the Future: Vernacular Architectue Studies in the Twenty-First Century’, in Vernacular Architcture in the Twenty–First Century: Theory, Education and Practice, ed. Lindsay Asquith and Marcel Vellinga (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2006), 84; C. Greig Crysler, ‘Time’s Arrows: Spaces of the Past’, in The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory, ed. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen (London: SAGE, 2013), 289–307. 14. Miles Lewis, ‘The Singapore Cottage’, Unibeam: The Journal of the School of Building and Estate Management, National University of Singapore X (1981): 89. 15. Jon Greenfield, ‘Timber Framing, the Two Bays and After’, in Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in association with Mulryne & Shewring, 1997), 97–120, 102. 16. James W. Griswold, A Guide to Medieval English Tithe Barns (Portsmouth, N.H.: Peter E. Randall Publisher, 1999), 15; Greenfield, The Two Bays, 100. 17. Griswold, English Tithe Barns, 15. 18. Lewis, Diagnosis of Prefabricated Buildings, 58. 19. Lewis, ‘The Singapore Cottage’, 90. 20. Lewis, ‘Prefabrication in the Gold-Rush Era: California, Australia, and the Pacific’, APT Bulletin 37, no. 1 (2006): 14. 21. Brian Lewis, ‘The Asian Touch in Building’, Hemisphere: An Asian-Australian Magazine 15, no. 4 (1971): 30 and Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 6 and 18. 22. For example, Louis Ah Mouy accompanied a number of flat-packed cottages on Captain Glendenning’s ship from Singapore to Melbourne in 1851 (Ching Fatt Yong, ‘Ah Mouy, Louis (1826–1918)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 3. 1851–1890, ed. Geoffrey Serle, Bede Nairn and Russel Ward (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1969), 355; Lewis, Portable House, 278). 23. Lewis, Asian Trade in Portable Buildings, 33 and McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal, 120. 24. McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal, Lewis, Portable House, 277. 25. Lewis, The Singapore Cottage, 89–90; Lewis, Portable House, 277. 26. Marguerite Hancock, ‘A Note on the Text’, in Georgiana’s Journal: Melbourne 1841–1865, ed. Hugh McCrae (Canberra: Halstead Press, 2007), 5. 27. McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal, 120–1. 28. George Gordon McC McCrae, ‘Some Recollections of Melbourne in the “Forties”’, Victorian Historical Magazine (November 1912): 117. 29. McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal, 23. 30. Ibid., 121. 31. Ibid. and Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 5. 32. McCrae, Georgiana’s Journal, 120–1. 33. Lewis and Lloyd, Portable Buildings, 5. 34. J. M. Freeland, Architecture in Australia (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia, 1968), 113. 35. Lewis, Asian Touch in Building. 36. ‘Hemisphere: An Asian-Australian Magazine’, in The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, ed. William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews (Oxford University Press, 2005). 37. Beeston and Matarredona Desantes, Adapting Vernacular Architecture, 125. 38. Herbert, Portable Colonial Cottage, 275. 39. Lewis, The Singapore Cottage. 40. For example, Miles Lewis citing historian W. P. Evans (Lewis, Portable House, 277 and 321).

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41. Lewis, Diagnosis of Prefabricated Buildings, 56. 42. Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 20. 43. Ibid., 1 and 18. 44. Muir, Andrew, Personal Communications (phone conversation), 04/01/2022 and 16/06/2022. 45. Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 6. 46. Ibid., 9. 47. Ibid., 6. 48. Ibid., 12. 49. Catherine Townsend, ‘Advertisements for Wooden Prefabricated Houses from the Auction Mart (1853) and the Argus’ (Melbourne, 1996), 21. 50. Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 19–21. 51. Ibid., 21. 52. Ibid., 19. 53. Timothy Hubbard, ‘Submission to the Classifications Committee of the Historic Buildings Council for Prefabricated House, 2 Henry Street, Windsor on Behalf of Ian Tudball and Others, Ian Tudball Pty Ltd Architects’, 59. Melbourne, 1993, 3 and Lewis, Miles, ‘15 July 1993 Letter to Timothy Hubbard Regards 2 Henry Street Prahran’, Melbourne, 1993. 54. Alan Willingham, ‘The Shack’ (Melbourne, 1996). 55. Muir, Personal Communications and Span-Keeble, N4 Record of Works, 6. 56. Willis Span-Keeble, ‘15 April 1993 Letter and Report to the Historic Buildings Council of Victoria’, 10. Melbourne: Willys Span-Keeble Architect, 1993, 4 and Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 6. 57. Willys Span-Keeble, ‘Written Record of Works: Singapore Cottage at 136 Sackville Street, Collingwood’, 89. Melbourne, 2002, 2. 58. The development approval was issued by the City of Yarra from an application made by consultant firm Stonearch (David Isaacs) and the building approval was issued by private building surveyors Metro Building Surveying based on an application made by John Ting Architect (John Ting and David Agnello) and Mark Hodkinson Consulting Structural Engineers (Mark Hodkinson). 59. Hubbard, 2 Henry Street Windsor, 9–10. 60. Span-Keeble, Span-Keeble to HBC 15/4/93, 1–2. 61. Muir, Personal Communications. 62. Willingham, The Shack, 15. 63. Span-Keeble, N4 Record of Works, 5. 64. Willingham, The Shack, 17. 65. Ibid. and Span-Keeble, N4 Record of Works, n.p. 66. Willingham, The Shack, 16. 67. Span-Keeble, N4 Record of Works, 8. 68. RBA Architects and Conservation Consultants. ‘Prefabricated (Singapore) Cottage, 17 Coventry Place, South Melbourne: Conservation Management Plan’. 87. Melbourne, 2004, 4. 69. Fieldwork was carried out by the author in 2010 and 2012. 70. Span-Keeble, N4 Record of Works, 4. 71. Lewis, Diagnosis of Prefabricated Buildings, 59. 72. Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 19. 73. Span-Keeble, Span-Keeble to Hbc 15/4/93, 2. 74. Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 18. 75. Lewis, Prefabrication in the Gold-Rush Era, 14.

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76. Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 6 and 21 (for the A-Star cottage) and Span-Keeble, N4 Record of Works, 4 (for the N-series cottages). 77. Sands, Collingwood Prefabricated Cottage, 18 and Span-Keeble, 15 April 1993 letter to HBC, 2. 78. Ibid. 79. Sung, Grace. ‘Pre-Fab S’pore Houses Shipped to Australia 150 Years Ago’, The Straits Times, 15 March 1994 1994. 80. Lewis, 2009 Personal Communications and Ting, Precarious Power, Forts and Outstations. 81. For example, the Iban longhouse Rumah Buloh Antu on the Paku River, visited by the author in June of 2010. 82. John Ting, ‘The Unique Tradition of Timber Shophouses in Sarawak’, Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand 32, no. 2 (2022): 16. 83. Boon, Mike. ‘11 December Digital Photographs of Pontianak Istana’. 2012 and Boon, Mike, ‘13 December Digital Photographs of Sambas Istana’. 2012. Brunei examples observed by the author in roadside buildings near Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, June 2012, on the way to the 11th Borneo Research Council Annual Conference at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. 84. Lewis, June 2022 Communications (personal communications). 85. John Ting, ‘Vernacular Prefabrication in the Colonial Context – the 1862 Bintulu Type Fort in Sarawak (in Print)’, in Distance Looks Back. The Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia & New Zealand, ed. Andrew Leach and Lee Stickels (Sydney: SAHANZ, 2019), 378. 86. John Ting, ‘Who Built Fort Alice? An Analysis of Subaltern Involvement in Nineteenth Century Institutional Architecture in Sarawak’, in Gold. The Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia & New Zealand, ed. Phillip Goad and AnnMarie Brennan (Melbourne: SAHANZ, 2016), 678–88, 681. 87. John Ting and Mike Boon, Pemulihaharaan Dan Menaiktaraf Kubu Alice, Sri Aman, Sebagai Muzium Warisan: Final Conservation Report (the Conservation of Fort Alice for Adaptive Reuse as a Heritage Museum in Sri Aman – Final Conservation Report). 3 vols, Volume 1. Kuching: Arkitek JFN Sdn. Bhd., 2016, S7/2. 88. Harriette McDougall, Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1882), 206. 89. Yong, Ah Mouy, Louis. 90. Ibid. 91. Ching Fatt Yong, ‘The Chinese in New South Wales and Victoria, 1901–21, with Special Reference to Sydney and Melbourne’, Australian National University, 1966, 355, Note 38. 92. John Ting, The History of Architecture in Sarawak before Malaysia (Kuching: Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia (Malaysian Institute of Architects), 2018), 114–15. 93. Lewis and I separately consulted Jon Lim, and the author also contacted Yeo Kang Shua at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Cheah Kok Ming and Johannes Widodo at the National University of Singapore, and the Singapore architectural historian, Lai Chee Kien. 94. Chee Kien Lai, ‘Roof Vent Slits (About a Corner)’, accessed 4 July 2022, https://www.facebook.com/ photo/?fbid=10161894717163852&set=a.10150612115783852. 95. Zhi Qiang Shee, ‘A Journey through Time – the Gallop Extension of the Singapore Botanic Gardens’ Learning Forest’, NParks Buzz 1, no. 28 (2016). In January 2023, Lewin Terrace was under conservation and could not be inspected. Fieldwork was undertaken by the author at Atabara, now conserved as a publicly-accessible facility, on 7 January 2023. 96. Kip Lin Lee, The Singapore House 1819–1942, ed. Gretchen Liu, Kathleen Lau and Singapore. Preservation of Monuments, Board. Singapore: Times Editions [for] Preservation of Monuments Board, 1988, 225.

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97. Norman Edwards, The Singapore House and Residential Life 1819–1939 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990), 99. 98. Robert Powell, Living Legacy: Singapore’s Architectural Heritage Renewed (Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society: Distributed by Select Books, 1994), Frontispiece, 2 and Lai, Through the Lens, 126 (6 Goodwood Hill). 99. Powell, Living Legacy, 138 (33 Malcolm Road). Fieldwork was undertaken by the author at 22 Bukit Chermin Road on 7 January 2023. 100. Lee, The Singapore House 1819–1942, 170. 101. Chee Kien Lai, Through the Lens of Lee Kip Lin: Photographs of Singapore, 1965–1995. Edited by Singapore. National Library, Board, Sg50: Singapore’s Golden Jubilee Gift of Books. Singapore: National Library Board Editions Didier Millet, 2015, 118. 102. Su Nin Khoo, Streets of Georgetown, Penang. Penang: self-published, 1993, 135 and Jon Lim, The Penang House and the Straits Architect 1887–1941 (Penang: Areca Books, 2015), 50–1. 103. Lim, Penang House, 53. 104. Ibid., 144 and Julian Davison, Swan and Maclaren: A Story of Singapore Architecture (Singapore: ORO Editions, 2020), 288. 105. Edwards, The Singapore House and Residential Life 1819–1939, 206. 106. Guo, Qinghua, and Chang [Zhang], Yu-Yu, The Weiwu at Dafuzhen: Unseen Details of Chinese Vernacular (Stuttgart and London: Edition Axel Mebges, 2016) and Zhang, Yu-Yu, Studies on the Craftsmanship of Traditional Chinese Carpenters in Fujian Region (Chinese Edition). Nanjing: Southeast University Press, 2010. 107. Yiting Pan and James W. P. Campbell, ‘A Study of Western Influence on Timber Supply and Carpentry in South China in the Early 20th Century’, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering 16, no. 2 (2017): 8. 108. Kang Shua Yeo, Divine Custody: A History of Singapore’s Oldest Teochew Temple (Singapore: NUS Press, 2021), 122–3. The author visited the conservation and restoration works at the Liang Shan Shuang Lin monastery on 7 January 2023. 109. Zhang, Chinese Carpenters in Fujian, 17. 110. Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, ‘The State and Migration in Chinese History’, Journal of Chinese History 5, no. 2 (2021): 174–5. 111. Yu-Yu Zhang, 8 September 2020 Personal Communications. 112. Ibid.

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12   Diasporic vernaculars? Different Australian commercial precincts   DAVID BEYNON AND IAN WOODCOCK

Introduction Vernacular architecture is conventionally seen as geographically situated and temporally fixed, so what do built environments created by and for people who are displaced from places of putative origin and transposed to another place – in this case, Australia – imply for definitions of the vernacular? To put it another way, if we can speak of diasporic vernaculars, what could this contribute to understandings of vernacular architectures more generally? This chapter concentrates on the commercial built environments of Australian communities of non-­ European, in particular, Asian and Middle-Eastern backgrounds, as a means of interrogating definitions of vernacular architecture. In a context of historic and postcolonial movements of people, the focus is on their adaptation of spatial and formal traditions in relation to geographies and cultures, correlations or conflicts with the concerns of the Australian nation-state, as well as commercial and touristic imperatives. To complicate this situation, identifiably ‘Asian’ or ‘Middle Eastern’ built environments in Australia are largely commercial (or religious and community-based) rather than domestic, many being retail precincts that have informally developed around the needs of groups of settlers for particular goods and services and become identified as having particular cultural or ethnic identities. Although they are often well-known locally, sometimes these precincts have been reified via formal symbolic or architectural interventions (gateway arches, themed street furniture, etc.). However, their physical and spatial qualities are largely reflective of commercial imperatives driven by particular communities’, or mixtures of communities’, practical needs. Reification can be seen as a consequence of such commercial imperatives, as well as internal/external desires to fix identity for governmental, marketing or touristic purposes. The scales at which these processes of strategic essentialist branding operate encompass the micro-scale of shopfront interiors and façade alterations to precinct-wide place-making and marketing. This chapter will investigate these issues through analysis and discussion of three commercial precincts in Australia, each of which has developed ‘non-European’ identities, but with differences that speak of these complications in terms of diasporic vernaculars. First, Victoria Street in Richmond, inner suburban Melbourne, has been identified since the mid-1970s with its Vietnamese-Australian community, developed in the wake of Australia’s refugee-driven immigration programme of the time. Though now this identification is becoming diffused, the recent construction of a symbolic gateway has fixed the street’s place identity for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile across Melbourne, Sydney Road is the main thoroughfare through inner northern Brunswick and Coburg, and identified with migration from Lebanon, Turkey and many other countries, though largely lacking permanent public symbolic interventions into its streetscape. Finally, Mowbray in Launceston, Tasmania, is a centre for more recently established Asian – and African-Australian communities. Here there are relatively new businesses serving locals of Chinese, Nepali-Bhutanese, Sudanese and other backgrounds, and the beginnings of culturally-based interest from the wider community and local

government. The questions raised by an analysis of these precincts relate to Australia’s recent demographic and economic shift away from Europe, along with reappraisals of the Asian or Middle Eastern aspects of Australia’s colonial and postcolonial history. Questions of the vernacular in these non-European diasporic and increasingly commodified built environments provide alternatives to Australia’s self-identification with a particular kind of European-diasporic vernacular architectural heritage and the role of commerce in it.

Commercial cultures? Contemporary vernaculars? As Australia’s demography has become increasingly heterogenous, non-Caucasian ethnicities have become less marginalized within frameworks of national identity and the idea of Australia as a multicultural society, despite some antagonism from various quarters, remains dominant. On the ground, this sense of a diversifying national identity can be seen in areas of obvious minority identity, and the gradual transformation of these areas from specialized commercial centres for marginalized communities to places of broader commercial and increasing cultural tourism potential. This process started with marginal communities utilizing decayed infrastructure in areas of economic decline and deprivation, followed by developing identifications of these areas with particular communities. Such identifications have since been subject to theming exercises under the imprimatur of local and state government policies of multiculturalism from the late 1970s. This is a process that can be traced from the governmental embrace of long-existing ‘Chinatowns’ in Melbourne, Sydney and other Australian cities, to the application of such labels as ‘Little Saigon’ or ‘Little India’. The potency of these denotations lies in their combination of symbolic purpose with commercial and touristic potential, and in part it is the packaging and exoticizing of the culture of ‘others’ within the Australian body politic that will be discussed in this chapter. However, in relation to notions of what might be vernacular in this context, we need to consider what all this labelling and exoticizing are being applied to. A label like ‘Little Saigon’ is not an a priori definition, though its application to a place of putative minority identity might reify and reinforce such an identity. The reasons for reification or conscious reinforcement of such identities contain clues about the nature of physical, spatial and socio-cultural characteristics of the spaces and places so labelled. They generally do not do this by altering the physical structure or composition of buildings, which in all the locations discussed in this chapter have largely been inherited from earlier occupants and businesses. This means that the demographic shift is important. When demography changes, detail changes; the signs of who is inhabiting spaces is where the difference lies. Studies of the traditional vernacular have generally concentrated on dwellings, as both the most archetypal and numerous of buildings. And while more recent architectural explorations of the vernacular post-Learning from Las Vegas have considered commercial buildings in this respect, studies of traditional shops or commercial spaces remain scarce. This is not due to the discounting of the shop as a vernacular typology, but the historic ephemerality of retail spaces.1 It has also become more generally accepted that there is such a thing as contemporary vernacular architecture,2 with processes of informal adaptation of existing buildings now increasingly accepted as the ongoing production of vernacular environments.3 In relation to this, Maudlin’s arguments about more broadly understanding vernacular architecture as an ongoing ‘other’ to formal architecture, whatever characteristics that otherness might take, are also useful here.4 He takes Oliver’s definition of the vernacular as essentially being about the framing of spaces in which daily life is performed as a starting point and qualifies it by defining vernacular architecture as ‘a catch-all other, in part defined by what architectural writers concerned with aesthetics and authorship think architecture is not’.5 He also seeks to contemporise concepts of the vernacular and question older understandings that place the vernacular as intrinsically traditional and so opposed to modernity,6 drawing on de Certeau’s

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interest in everyday practices.7 As Maudlin describes it, de Certeau’s ideas ‘have provided a cultural framework within which we can consider the evolved, non-designed conflation of structures and spaces which continue to create places such as the village and the city neighbourhood’.8 It is the nature of this cultural framework that marks the distinction between the spaces that will be discussed in this chapter and those of a multitude of other retail strips across Australia. Each recognizably immigrant community is identifiable because it brings its own genealogies of practice to the mix – defined by specificities of spoken and written language, material culture and product, allied to modes of exchange and consumption, defined by histories and translations, adapted to conditions and inscribed into localities. The spatial occupation of these retail/commercial precincts denotes and demarcates territory via signage, goods and services, spatial practices of display and the demography of traders and customers. These practices are rendered visible as culturally distinguishable assemblages tied together through clothing, language, gestures, social practices and phenotypical characteristics, but rarely by distinctive architectural form. Yet spatial occupation is important within a broader Australian/Western conception of land ownership – notwithstanding unceded Indigenous sovereignty of that same land – as retail/commercial precincts are places not only of economic but also cultural production. And it is the nature of this production that is important, as it is rarely instigated by architects, designers or planners (except in the completely privatized environments of shopping malls). As eloquently put by Alian and Wood in their study of the demographically diverse suburb of Bankstown in Sydney, their putative cultural identity is contingent. [I]t would be difficult to sustain the argument that Bankstown’s traders have adapted public/private interfaces in particularly novel ways. In countless main streets and town centres across Australia, buildings of similar vintage and (more or less) similar condition might be identified.9

This work, in part based on Dovey and Wood’s earlier categorization of urban interfaces,10 is useful because it consciously avoids the exoticizing lens through which other commentors, including postcolonial ones, have seen ethnically specific commercial/retail environments as not only different in goods and services, but also in their spatial practices. However, synchronic observation must be supplemented by diachronic awareness to understand the dynamism of urban environments that works in tandem with commercial formulae, for success and diverse immigration is partially to thank for this. Spatial practices such as ‘al-fresco’ dining or footpath trading have rapidly become so commonplace in Australian and many other Anglophone cities that their association with cultural otherness has largely been forgotten. Similarly, the kind of hybridity and extemporization associated with much South East Asian cuisine has become so familiar and successful in Australia that it is now marketed as an Australian way of making food, immensely ironic for a nation famous for its production of raw materials for ‘meat and two veg’-style repasts. Diasporic vernacularization, then, could be interpreted as a pragmatic internalizing of formerly exotic minority cultural expertise in order to render it as an everyday homely phenomenon accessible to all. Given this point, the reader of this chapter might now ask, why concentrate on these three specific locations on the basis of their ethnic identification when, in terms of architectural form there is little difference between them and a myriad other Anglo-Australian shopping strips? The architecture of these places (other than recent symbolic interventions) is generic and mostly inherited from relatively universal typologies, though the verandah-fronted Australian shop or shop-house is arguably distinguishable from its European or American counterparts and already bears the traces of Asian genealogy. However, as one of the authors of this chapter has previously argued in relation to colonial-era Chinese-Australian buildings, herein lies a paradox.11 Anti-immigration/racist rhetoric in Australia argues for the intrinsic otherness of non-Western cultures compared to the Anglo-Australian majority, while contemporary

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discourses of belonging call into question the usefulness of ethnic signifiers as overtly essentialist definitions of complicated identity. This chapter is not arguing for an appreciation of the ethnicized vernacular on the basis of unrecognized exoticism. However, from formal architectural/urban design points of view, it is from such clues that ideas about symbolic gateways, street furniture, emblematic structures partially arise. They literally concretize a sense of difference perceived in these locations, but one that cannot be conclusively attributed via analysis of architectural form. Or at least, not by the kind of architectural analysis that sees ethno-cultural essence within the formal/spatial composition of architecture, while relegating the accretions of signage and ephemeral displays of retail goods to superficial status. However, lack of typological/morphological difference does not mean a lack of perceptible difference, or a lack of cultural/ethnicized identification on the part of those working and shopping in a particular place. To be marked as different is difference enough. And once marked, other differences are unnecessary to prove. This discussion can be connected to Ang’s analysis of ethnic self-commodification in Australian urban environments.12 Ang draws on Comaroffs’ idea of ‘Ethnicity, Inc.’ where the branding of cultures might be both a simplistic reduction of culture to theming and more positively creates an arena that benefits ethnic subjects as it facilitates presentation of their socio-cultural patterns in consumable forms.13 Drawing on this notion brings together traditional notions of the vernacular as intrinsic to identity and the contemporary idea that identity is intrinsic to the market economy. As urban middle-class populations have become increasingly mobile, relationships between space, place and originary identity have become diffused, leading, as this analysis argues, to an ambivalence about the existential rootlessness of modern life; ‘ … that seeks to requite itself in encounters with “authentic” otherness – albeit in consumable form’.14 What seem to be required here are both sufficiently packageable identities and a wider population with both the means and the desire to consume them.

Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria Richmond is one of Melbourne’s oldest suburbs and like other inner suburbs of Australia’s major cities has long been a place of immigrant settlement. Richmond was severely affected by the 1930s depression and was a focus of Melbourne’s slum abolition movement during the 1940s and 1950s. Following this, the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works’ 1954 Master Plan recommended ‘comprehensive redevelopment’ as the solution,15 and in 1964 after demolition of large numbers of houses, the high-rise towers of the North Richmond’s Housing Commission estate commenced construction. The Vietnam War then spurred an influx of refugees from Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia, and a retail district of Victoria Street adjacent to the Commission Estate started to develop into a centre for Vietnamese-Australian business. Much of the commercial building stock was inherited by the current owners and traders, and consists of a motley collection of late-Victorian to mid-twentieth-century shopfronted buildings, some with dwellings above, now interspersed with more recent structures, but none more than two storeys in height and largely expediently and economically constructed. However, the building stock is just a backdrop for a far more varied collection of signs in Vietnamese, Chinese and other mostly Asian languages and a multitude of displayed products, both in shop windows and on footpaths. The most recognizable architectural landmark in Victoria Street’s retail strip is the Chợ Bến Thành (Bến Thành market) building, though its significance is unlikely to be apparent to casual visitors. It is not actually a market but a strip of ten retail premises, including (in early 2020) a small supermarket specializing in Vietnamese products, a butcher, a Vietnamese bakery, Vietnamese/Chinese restaurants and discount stores, all under a beige rendered concrete panel façade with simplified postmodern arch elements. The

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overall composition of this collective façade is symmetrical, centred on a square clock tower with a pyramidal roof, under which the words CHỢ BẾN THÀNH are applied. However, its form is not just a sad example of cut-rate postmodern facadism, and clues to this are the flags that flank the clock tower. These include two Australian national flags and two flags with thin horizontal red bands over a yellow background, representing the former Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). And in Saigon, capital of this former republic, is the original Chợ Bến Thành, constructed in 1914 under French colonial rule and still the central market in that city. Its distinctive clocktower marks its southern entry and is seen as a symbol of the city.16 Its representation in Victoria Street is thus geographically cultural as well as political, though the potency of its symbolism seems to be waning. Despite only dating to the early 1990s, the building is becoming dilapidated, the newest restaurant to move in is Korean, and there were at the time of writing plans for demolition and replacement by a larger development (Figure 12.1).

Fig. 12.1  Victoria Street, Richmond. Combined streetscape views of the south side of Victoria Street in Richmond. The top streetscape view starts with Chợ Bến Thành building at far left, and the bottom streetscape view ends with Victoria Street Gateway at far right. Streetscapes in between show range of predominantly VietnameseAustralian cafés, shops and other businesses. Photographs and layout by David Beynon.

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To this, in 2014, was added the Victoria Street Gateway; and its relationship to the life of the street makes for an interesting interaction between notions of the vernacular, the cultural and the commercial. The Victoria Street Gateway project involved an intensive community collaboration process between local government (the City of Yarra) and an association of local traders (the Richmond Asian Business Association). Its architect Gregory Burgess stated that the project’s aim was to focus attention on ‘Vietnamese and Asian identity, culture and tradition’.17 The gateway and suspended hat forms were to be the first stage of a project intended to continue to the other side of the bridge to the next major street junction. However, as the symbolic gateway remains the major completed element, the most straightforward reading of the intervention is as a formal marker of entry into an ‘other’ culture. As such, the Victoria Street Gateway both frames the perceived identity of the street beyond, and architectonically provides a contrast between its conscious representation of cultural content and the pragmatic realities of commercial enterprises in which culture is performed – the shops, restaurants and other businesses in Victoria Street. Somewhat paradoxically, the Gateway’s composition evokes the vernacular architectural forms of the cultures represented in the street in a way that none of the commercial premises did (or tried to do), yet the campaign for its construction being driven by local retailers of such cultural origins suggests a perceived need for precisely such evocation. Vernacular traditions became perceptually connected to the form of the Gateway so there was a mnemonic aspect of the archetypal environment from which this commerce originated. The architectural and the quotidian have, if this mnemonic is effective, a kind of symbiotic relationship. The Victoria Street Gateway, despite its boat-like form, can also be read as a ceremonial free-standing arch or gate, a typology that has both Western and Eastern antecedents. The Victoria Street Gateway can be seen both in relation to this Western lineage, but also within the Sino-Vietnamese tradition of constructing symbolic gateways. The paifang or pailou is a traditional Chinese gateway to a town district, the suffix – fang in paifang meaning a traditional Chinese district, and given the 900-year occupation of Vietnam by the Chinese, its form is commonly seen in Vietnam as well as China.18 Placement of the form and the more diffused sense of the Gateway standing for cultural identity or origins are then a result of intercultural encounters of Asian migrants to an European-dominated Australian society. A gateway to an ethnically denoted precinct is both a marker of difference and a threshold between one kind of territory (the host/majority) and another (the minority subject or ‘other’ to the host/majority). In relating this symbolic structure to the broader meaning and context of the multitude of retail and commercial spaces that it denotes, there is a spectrum of meanings, depending on the extent to which the observer of this Gateway is an outsider or an insider to what happens within the denoted district. The coalescence of both insider and outsider attitudes in this manner has followed a shift in social conditions where at least some aspects of ethnic minority settlement (cuisine, products, periodic festivals) have become drawcards. Reification of identity in the form of architecture or street furniture also signifies a denoted place of safely alluring otherness for visitors. More specifically, the Victoria Street Gateway’s symbolic associations speak of the contestable and negotiable space that such a precinct represents. The Gateway does not specifically reference architecture in its form, or, in a literal sense, either the Western tradition of archways or the Sino-Vietnamese tradition of paifang/pailou. Its shape most resembles a boat, and so could be read as representing the means by which some of the first generation of Vietnamese immigrants came to Australia. The Gateway’s associated elements provide more specific evidence of the use of the boat-form. Circular discs with concentric patterns and representations of people and boats/houses are mounted to the brick pillars that support the overhead rail bridge adjacent to the Gateway. The discs represent patterns engraved into the tops of bronze drums. This type of drum originated from the Đông Sơn culture in what is now central Vietnam between 600 BCE to 300 CE and their representations of boat-like forms closely resemble roof shapes still constructed by

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various Austronesian cultures in Southeast Asia. Reference to these drums posits the roof-boat form as a pan-Southeast Asian symbol, where Vietnamese identity is diffused into a more inclusive Southeast Asian identity that encompasses other communities represented by the precinct’s businesses. As with similar examples,19 the Gateway is in part the result of lobbying and fund-raising on the part of the Victoria Street Traders Association, a group led at the time of its instigation by the proprietor of one of the Vietnamese restaurants in the precinct. For commercial purposes, the Gateway serves as a branding mechanism. Its distinctive and ‘exotic’ form pragmatically suggests the distinctiveness of nearby businesses, even though Victoria Street contains no obviously ‘Vietnamese – or even generically Asian-looking’ buildings (whatever they might be). The presence of an ethnically marked gateway indicates a threshold of difference and, for the traders, provides an attractor of potential customers within a competitive business environment and a way of reinforcing its identity. Now that the established community has dispersed to the extent that several of the new enterprises in the area represent different backgrounds and ethnicities, the Gateway also serves to reinforce the area’s identity and economic health in situ. Victoria Street’s commercial architecture only provides subtle hints about the cultural specificity of its spaces or formal elements, beyond having distinctive signage or displayed goods. Clues might be found in Phuong and Groves’ account of contemporary shophouses in Hanoi, in which they analyse how belief in phong thuy (the Vietnamese equivalent of fengshui) remains instrumental for many Vietnamese in guiding the use and manipulation of architectural space.20 While detailing specific examples, such as the relocation of interior fittings and the use of charms to offset inauspicious orientations, their broader point is to argue for the importance of insiders’ experiences and understandings of place, including the application of symbolic meanings to everyday elements and practices that indicate spiritual relationships between people and places.21 Moreover, this relationship is not passive. To mitigate ta khi (bad forces) and enhance vuong khi (good forces) within a building requires active mediation, be it the placement of objects, the relocation of fittings or the reorientation of pathways.22 Might such culturally derived contemporary views not also be found in the places where Vietnamese migrants have settled? If you look at the spatial details within Victoria Street Richmond’s businesses, such spatialities and elements can be identified. Niches under counters of Vietnamese-Chinese restaurants contain shrines. Angled openings in otherwise orthogonal shopfronts suggest beliefs in unseen energies. Links between the physical, the symbolic and the culturally practised are given further aesthetic, symbolic and spatial emphasis during each year’s Victoria Street Lunar New Year Festival, when the street is closed to vehicular traffic and up to 80,000 visitors are attracted to food stalls, ceremonial events (Lion Dancing in front of and inside shops to invoke good business in the coming year), performances of both traditional and contemporary Vietnamese music, and events such as phở (Vietnamese noodle soup) eating competitions. To frame these activities, a complete armature of temporary structures is erected on both sides of the street, evoking the temporary hawkers’ stalls on streets in Vietnam in their general aspect, but also in their spatial relationship to the permanent shops behind. The difference is the occasionality of this spatial usage in Victoria Street, indicating the confluence of cultural and touristic elements towards the essentially economic imperatives of a commercial precinct. The Lunar New Year Festival is an engagement in cultural tourism.23 While celebratory and reinforcing of important aspects of Victoria Street’s community, the festival also reinforces the fundamental aim of many immigrants to make a living, and the presence of a precinct, however positively it may be viewed today, is an indicator of both immigrant minority disadvantage as well as opportunity. Commercial exchanges driven by taste and custom can be both constraints on, as well as enablers of, enterprise within an evolving multiculture whose scope and limits are constantly being tested. Being a successful member of a minority community has often meant being entrepreneurial, whether through disposition or need,24 and an obvious application of such entrepreneurialism is to provide for the needs and

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desires of the minority community. Both the Lunar Festival and the Victoria Street Gateway demonstrate the importance of this purpose. In both, aspects of tradition and history are referenced, sometimes to the point of cliché, but does this matter? What the festival spaces, gateway and streetscape elements (notably the Bến Thành market) share is a lexicon of forms, gestures, details and compositional tactics/strategies. Some elements are associated with cultural, political and social ideals, others with historical events. Usage and deployment vary. Forms are appropriated for stylistic and commercial ends. Original forms and references are re-framed and re-focused for consumption for both insiders and outsiders (a distinction that becomes blurrier with passing generations).

Sydney Road, Brunswick and Coburg, Victoria Sydney Road has been reputed to be the longest continuous commercial strip in the Southern hemisphere. Originally surveyed in 1835, commencing 4 kilometres from the northern edge of the colonial grid of what is today Melbourne’s CBD, the street runs gun-barrel straight for another 4.5 kilometres as the only direct north-south route traversing Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs of Brunswick and Coburg. Sydney Road was originally a service road for farms, so its narrow 20 metre width belies its central role in the city’s movement economy. The Gold Rush spurred the initial urbanization along and around Sydney Road and it became a waystation settlement for the waves of early migrants from around the world seeking their fortunes. From the 1850s, bluestone quarrying and claypits in Brunswick gave rise to stonemasonry and brickmaking industries, many established by Irish migrants, providing the materials from which much of Victorian Melbourne is built. These resources were exhausted by the 1930s, but Sydney Road’s attractiveness to waves of migrants continued with the rise of the textile, footwear and clothing industries in the area. Being established long before the advent of modernist town planning, Brunswick, like most of inner Melbourne, thus developed as a tightly packed mix of industrial and commercial activities cohabiting with religious, recreational, civic and residential ones, often within the same building. At the time of writing, Sydney Road’s main landmarks were twelve churches and the Brunswick Town Hall, all unceremoniously mixed in with rows of single and double-storey verandahed shophouses, several non-descript civic and community buildings, former factories, warehouses, a tram depot and a few larger-­format retail premises (often created from knocking out the party walls between shophouses, or else tilt-slab boxes). By and large, these structures were built up to the property boundary, creating a ‘sideby-side’ linearity that confounds any attempts to foreground some functions over others. Significantly for our discussion, about 70 per cent of the properties on Sydney Road were covered by heritage controls dating back to the 1990s that make alterations to street facades very difficult. These controls tend to favour ‘returning’ buildings to their original outward appearance, which in most cases means the Victorian, Edwardian or inter-war periods prior to the post-war waves of migration from Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South and South East Asia and Horn of Africa. These restrictive controls have meant that Sydney Road properties were often in poor states of repair, since maintaining or upgrading to heritage-worthy standards can be very costly. The market for redevelopment (which must keep and renovate the front half of the building) has only relatively recently developed. The result of this is that, like Victoria Street Richmond, the ethno-architectural character arises from the plethora of ‘ethnic markers’ that have been added to buildings: signs above, below and on the front of verandahs and building facades, on shop fronts, in windows, on doors, the products on display, services on offer, and the names of businesses and their proprietors, as well as the micro-grain of handwritten notices and ephemera such as flyposters and hand-written notes on windows and doors – plus the presence of people of ‘Middle-Eastern’, ‘Indian’ or ‘Asian’ appearance on the footpaths, in shops and in vehicles with

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‘ethnic’ music playing. As with Victoria Street, many shopfronts displayed, albeit discretely, small shrines or charms to bring wealth and good luck, adjacent to or just inside doorways (Figure 12.2). Numerically, ‘ethnic markers’ were present on about 30 per cent of the approximately 900 buildings on Sydney Road through Brunswick and Coburg. These representations of non-white ethnicity have been declining since the mid-1990s, when gentrification of Melbourne’s inner north began in earnest. The proportion of these markers was lower than the overall demographic mix in the City of Meri-Bek (formerly Moreland) in which Sydney Road is situated, which was the reverse of Victoria Street, where the presence of Vietnamese and Asian markers is higher than the proportion of their populations in the hinterland suburban area, although the Vietnamese population there has significantly declined in the last decade. An aspect of this ethnic marking of surfaces is that in many cases the fit-outs made do with what was already present, only changing or adding the minimum necessary to make each successive business operable. So, this means a Pan-Asian restaurant operating from a shopfront replete with the faux-classical

Fig. 12.2  Sydney Road, Brunswick. Upper image (main): streetscape strips for the eastern side of Sydney Road through the suburb of Brunswick, identifying building facades with non-English ethnic markers; (right) strip of the entire 4.5 km of Sydney Road through Brunswick and Coburg using the same coding for non-English ethnic markers on building facades. Lower image: Sydney Road, eye-level street view in Brunswick. Photographs, diagrams and layout by Ian Woodcock.

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columns of the Italian Restaurant that preceded it; that standing in a context of wall fixtures betraying an earlier existence as a jewellery store. Likewise, one of Sydney Road’s most famous institutions, a Turkish restaurant that opened in 1978, has retained the pine match-boarded interior from a previous business. Subsequent expansions of the restaurant created by knocking through party walls into adjacent shophouses have not carried through this décor, thus treating patrons to an object lesson in extemporization and bricolage behind a series of consistent Victorian façades. Sydney Road is formed from a 20 metre wide road reservation. The space is mainly dedicated to cars and trams, leaving a mere 2.5 metres either side for footpaths, which are mostly continuously weather protected by verandah awnings – essentially, the same arrangement as Victoria Street, Richmond and many, many other tram-(or bus-)related commercial strips in Australian cities. This simple spatial arrangement has the effect of heightening the intensity of physical interactions that occur on footpaths because of the lack of space. When traders put goods on the street, or serve food to al-fresco diners, every passer-by is brought into proximity with these items. Encounters with people wearing burkas, abayas, hijabs, shalwar kameez and other forms of markedly ethnic clothing are not uncommon in Sydney Road. The presence of shop windows proudly displaying these items creates a distinctive impression within a broader Australian mainstream culture, where people clad in such clothing have been subject to long-standing media portrayals of ‘others-to-be-frightened-of.’25 Sydney Road’s businesses are diverse and largely independent, few chains of any kind are present on the strip. The non-European markers are to be found relatively evenly distributed along the entire strip, and on a wide range of enterprises and services, such as accountants, lawyers, photographers, medical centres, automotive, white goods, home computing, stationery and so on. The cafes, bakeries and restaurants that are the subject of cultural tourism and popular with urban progressives are not large in number – perhaps no more than eight to ten businesses in the entire strip, but they do form concentrations of a sort within the linear space of the street, interspersed by other kinds of businesses. As Victoria Street’s ethno-architectural identity is reinforced by a very popular and long-running Lunar New Year Festival, Sydney Road’s multicultural identity is celebrated with the annual Sydney Road Street Party. First established in 1989, as an initiative of the local Ethnic Communities Council, as a way to give a fresh face to the annual Mayoral Ball, the Street Party has grown to become as popular as Australia’s national ANZAC war memorial day, attracting over 60,000 people over the course of a Sunday afternoon. Roughly a kilometre of roadway is given over to street stalls run mostly by the businesses in the street interspersed with numerous stages for live music, representative of an ethnic diversity far greater than that normally present in the street. The street space becomes a free-flowing parade of pedestrians and performers for seven hours, intensifying the everyday experience of Sydney Road. In addition to the street party, Sydney Road has a long-standing identity as a place of public politics and street-based protests. During the years of Australia’s conservative Howard Government, particularly in the early phase post-9/11 when demonization of Muslims and people of ‘middle-eastern appearance’ was acute, but also, in more recent times of racially charged politics, Sydney Road has been the site chosen by progressive political and anti-racist organizations to hold public protests specifically denouncing Islamophobic racism. Such media events have served to further inscribe a marked non-European identity for Sydney Road into the popular imaginary. As a form of diasporic vernacular, then, Sydney Road exemplifies the necessity of reading architecture as a dynamic assemblage of the fixed and the transient, formal and informal, tangible and intangible, wherein what the architecture gets to be depends on who is occupying it and using it for making their livelihood viable at any point in time. This process continually escalates layers of ethnic marking via the mainstream imaginaries for cultural consumption, tourism and political positioning. Places like Victoria Street and

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Sydney Road are sites of diasporic vernacular architecture because the combination of form and regulatory control create conditions conducive to occupation by marginal identities and enterprises – the kinds of environments conducive to providing minority migrants with the toeholds necessary to forge a livelihood.

Invermay Road, Mowbray, Tasmania Mowbray is a northern suburb of Launceston, and has been since the early nineteenth century the location of the city’s main racecourse. However, apart from an early homestead, it developed as an industrial area and a centre for immigration in the late nineteenth century. In the 2016 census, the majority of the suburb’s population was noted as Australian-born (66.3 per cent), though this percentage was lower than recorded for any other of Launceston’s suburbs, with the city overall recording 80.2 per cent of its population as born in Australia. After this, the next highest responses were for Bhutan (4.2 per cent), Nepal (3.2 per cent), China, Myanmar and Malaysia, compared to overall Tasmanian statistics for Bhutan-born (0.1 per cent) and Nepal-born (0.2 per cent) populations. Similarly, the highest response for languages spoken other than English in Mowbray was for Nepali (7.5 per cent).26 This Bhutanese/Nepalese population has become, along with Hazara Afghans and Sudanese, the most prominent new community of non-European residents. The Bhutanese/Nepalese community in Launceston started with four families who arrived in 2008, the end result of a refugee programme. They are descended from a population in southern Bhutan of Nepalese ethnic background, with distinct language, culture and religious beliefs that have been recently suppressed in Bhutan, despite the community’s generations of settlement there. As a result, the community identifies as both Nepalese and Bhutanese, so while most of the community is Hindu, one prominent local community organization is the Bhutanese Kirat Society of Australia (BKSoA) Inc., with Kirat signifying ancestral and spiritual links to Nepal.27 At the time of writing, a diversity of ethnic cultures was present in Mowbray, and growing demographically, represented by an increasing number of specialist shops and other businesses. However, none were prevalent and what was most apparent was the heterogeneity of the small communities that reside and shop in the area, and the specialized nature of both products and clientele for each enterprise. There are three groceries specializing in Nepalese, Bhutanese, Indian and Sri Lankan products in the suburb of Mowbray, plus one specialising in Chinese products (plus some Korean, Japanese and Southeast Asian items). Mowbray is also the location of a wholefoods shop with a section selling African food and haircare products, a café/takeaway making and selling Chinese sea urchin dumplings, a Chinese freight-forwarding business, a kebab shop with a small sideline in Middle Eastern groceries, an Indian/Nepalese restaurant, and a Tasmania-wide Asian noodle franchise, amongst the usual Australian suburban fast food businesses (KFC, Dominos, Hungry Jacks) and a broad range of culturally-unspecific businesses. All are housed in pre-existing single-storey shopfront premises of a generic mid- to late-twentieth-century kind, with plateglass fronts and cantilevered awnings. And similar to Victoria Street and Sydney Road, it is denotation by signage and display of particular goods that primarily provides evidence of cultural or ethnic difference. Overall, as Mowbray is part of much smaller urban area than Richmond, the nascent effects of broader immigration-led demographic change on the overall city of Launceston are also worth brief discussion here. The city has a scattering of Asian restaurants and cafes, and gatherings of food trucks bearing Sri Lankan, Spanish, Malay and Afghan foods draw mixed crowds. But the city is much smaller than Melbourne, and its middle class is correspondingly smaller, and demographically much whiter. Apart from Mowbray’s businesses, there is a grocery specialising in Afghan (as well as Persian and other Middle Eastern) products, another shop selling Nepalese products and a more comprehensively pan-Asian grocery (the largest of these establishments) in the centre of Launceston. It is in and around those largest of retail establishments

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Fig. 12.3  Invermay Road, Mowbray. Combined images of Invermay Road in Mowbray, showing a mixture of shop windows and signage. These are indicative of the diversity of ethnic/cultural origins of local residents and businesses; Indian, Nepalese, Chinese, African, within a small-scale suburban retail precinct. Photographs and layout by David Beynon.

that Launceston’s most prominent Asian cultural celebration is held, the annual marking of the Lunar New Year. In contrast to the scale of the Victoria Street version, this is largely centred around the ceremonial lion’s blessing of a single retail premises, and the event attracts a small crowd each year as well as local media coverage. Because of the small size of the city’s more specifically Chinese-Australian community the participants in the lion’s dance are themselves a cross-cultural mix. Meanwhile, other culturally specific events are held with a much lesser level of outsider participation. An example of these in 2019 was the Bhutanese-Australian Soccer Championships, held at Churchill Park adjacent to Mowbray. While teams from Australia’s Bhutanese/Nepalese community competed, a collection of stalls sold Bhutanese/Nepalese food to an almost entirely Bhutanese-Australian crowd. Nepalese festivals such as Tihar (the equivalent of Diwali as the Hindu Festival of Lights) do garner local media publicity but are still essentially for a particular community,28 in comparison with their more public projections in Melbourne.29

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Beyond its scattering of ethnic businesses, Mowbray’s population is still largely Anglo-Celtic and at the time of writing, the suburb had remained a relatively impoverished area, with a median weekly income of $419, compared to the Tasmanian average of $573 and the Australian overall average of $662.30 In contrast, the median weekly incomes of Richmond and Brunswick in Victoria were reported as $1056 and $823 respectively in the same census. The current local government plan for Mowbray (from 2019, implementation delayed due to Covid) is encapsulated in the City of Launceston’s My Place. My Future: A plan for living, working and playing north of the river. This document outlines a general plan for the city’s the traditionally disadvantaged northern suburbs with non-culturally specific aims for supporting the area’s social, economic and cultural outcomes.31 There is broader local government recognition and of changing demography of the area but this has largely centred on provision of services for newly arrived refugee communities, rather than interest in the evolving built environment per se. The only public representation of the diverse cultural communities’ resident in the suburb is a faded grid of local photographic portraits behind the street’s main bus stop. If we are to accept the idea of a trajectory of diversification, in Mowbray we can see the early stages of how demographic change is impacting the built environment. The ‘early’ characteristics of Mowbray’s diversification are represented by its relatively low socio-economic status (and therefore relatively economical residential and retail rental rates) compared to Launceston overall, as well as by the relative insularity and atomization of its businesses as presently they largely cater for the needs of their own small communities.

Conclusion But what makes a contemporary shopping strip ‘vernacular’, if such a term can be applied at all? Very little about the physical built environment of Victoria Street, Richmond, Sydney Road, Brunswick or Invermay Road, Mowbray evokes conventional notions of vernacular architecture. The building stock is generic and utilitarian, no matter which identified group is occupying it. While particular cultural backgrounds can be identified by the display and provision of particular products and practices, in typological terms, these displays seem not dissimilar to those of other cultural backgrounds. The goods may be different, but is the manner in which goods are displayed and how customers and staff interact with the overall space of shops intrinsically different to those of predominantly Caucasian European-derived communities? Certainly, some of the produce sold in their retail establishments or the food served in their cafes and restaurants relates to culturally or regionally specific origins, but what of the many other enterprises? Are not businesses such as legal and accounting services or phone repairs/sales outlets ostensibly identical to those in other areas, other than perhaps their proprietor’s ability to communicate in particular languages? To answer such questions would require fine-grained observational studies. As noted earlier in the case of Vietnamese businesses, the locations of specific elements such as shrines under counters as well as apparently ordinary items such as mirrors can suggest meanings unseeable to outsiders. Perhaps such meanings could be applied to the modes of display, the items selected to be displayed, and the ways they are categorized, particularly where a business is independent and not subject to rules and guidelines enforced by franchises and retail chains. Yet, the overall territory created is one of difference, first in that these particular locations have become identified as different to what surrounds them, second because they are obviously different in their geographical and chronological displacement from the places of emigration and previous settlement, and third because their difference is not singular but multiple. None of these areas are occupied, despite labels and public signage, by a singular diasporic community. They are instead the meeting and merging places for multiple diasporas and transnational communities, within which smaller groups and individuals have multiple allegiances and identifications both inside and beyond the territory.

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Also, as first-generation migrants become outnumbered by their second- and third-generation progeny these multiple identities are developing and changing. The signage, displays and other apparently ephemeral aspects of these demographically changed built environments are in this sense important, as well as for whatever aesthetic value they might hold. Since heritage protection is often afforded to nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century signs painted on the sides of commercial buildings and graffiti can be recognized as street art in certain situations, not seeing the apparently superficial and transient manifestations of diverse recent retail environments as worthy of recognition and value seems to be a case of cultural bias. The contention of this chapter is that the nature of the contemporary vernacular in a place such as Victoria Street, and its formation (and its ‘difference’ or distinctiveness from other locations) lies in the interstices between structure and performance, in which the identities of bodies interacting, adapting and living in quotidian ways are important. It is this confluence that constitutes the vernacular, what makes a location ‘live’ in a specific way. And it is this engagement with found and inherited space and configurations of vehicular and pedestrian movement, along with differential proximities to dwellings and places of worship, that denote difference from both the surrounding majority culture as well as the cultures of places of origin. The question then is whether all the theming and evocation of cultural pasts are primarily for insiders, to give a sense of identity or ‘home’, or is it for outsiders to demarcate and exoticize a particular environment for commercial and touristic purposes? It is most likely both, given the economic ambitions associated with retail. Shops, while being primarily if not entirely business enterprises, are also important to marginal cultures as oblique critiques of hegemonic culture (one can’t get these products in the supermarket), and as a source of new inspiration to enrich that culture (as the area becomes more identified with minority cultures’ products, one probably will be able to get some of these products in the supermarket in future). At the same time, there have been advocates of the necessity for the mainstream body politic to recognize the value of minority cultures for themselves,32 regardless of economic or other instrumental imperatives. Their existence makes present the diversifying reality of these environments, a patchwork of micro-scale activities and situations, in which most individuals and groups are engaged, as de Certeau would put it, in tactics rather than strategies.33 They are making the most of the limited space and resources at their disposal to make distinct places, perhaps not in the manner of literature to consciously resist the ‘strategies’ of hegemonic or dominant forces, but certainly to work with (and sometimes counter) the instrumental strategies of council planning departments. These transformations have both political and commercial aspects. As noted in the publicity surrounding the installation of street signage naming a Sydney city block ‘Thai town’, such an official designation can turn a concentration of culturally related commercial premises into an identified ‘place’. As Biravij Suwanpradhee, the Thai consul-general to New South Wales stated at the opening celebrations for Sydney’s Thai Town, ‘For us, it gives us an identity here, like with Koreatown and Chinatown. For many Thai people, this area is a home away from home.’34 Mowbray is not yet at that the stage where its few Nepalese/Indian, Chinese or African grocery establishments are projecting claims for broader territory (the African grocery products are in the back room of a wholefoods store, so barely project to the shop window). However, Sydney Road, Brunswick is a site where cultural identity has projected beyond individual businesses. While its precise nature is contested and ambivalent and it does not obviously claim external territory, Sydney Road is marketed as a tourist destination, periodic events such as the Sydney Road Street Party attract huge crowds, and the distinctive products of its enterprises are sold across the Melbourne metropolitan area. Victoria Street, Richmond, as reified by the construction of its Gateway, has moved well beyond the tactical and the contingent and engaged the strategy of the overarching jurisdiction of its territory. Its tactics have become enmeshed in the local municipality’s system, from occupation of urban territory to an urbanism of distinct forms, albeit primarily symbolic.

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However, what do these built environments represent for Australia’s evolving identity? In its framing and siting in a place such as Mowbray, a ‘Nepalese’ grocery is local to Tasmania, but in its denotation and proffered goods it projects a relocated identity, a sensory environment that projects difference. While it does not represent a theoretical realignment of identity, it demonstrates the result of pragmatic and tangible processes of physical, social and cultural negotiation. There is a complex relationship between a work of ethnically specific architecture and the area in which it is located. ‘There is a difference between an observer claiming that architecture is a connotative symbol that the observer is reading, and a group using architecture as a communication device.’35 Perhaps, as Brown and Maudlin argue, we need to focus on issues of ambiguity, transience and ephemerality as intrinsic qualities of the vernacular’s engagement with modernity, both in physical terms of spatial occupation (such as within shops), and in broader theoretical conceptions of how the idea of vernaculars, rather than being seen manifestations of tradition, might more productively be evaluated as examples of ‘multiple modernities’ that continue to be manifested through inhabitation and adaptation long after the ‘architectural’ work of completing the building has been completed.36 To think of these environments as vernacular means reading their processes of re-enactment (stating available products with signage), making (the proliferation of cottage industries both local and more distant to supply commercial desires and needs), and performing (the employment of people to distribute, display and sell products on the on one hand, and to view, purchase and consume them on the other). All of these acts, within precincts where any promoted ethnic minority identity stands for a multiplicity of ethnic backgrounds and identifications, reference elsewhere in time and space, positioning participants within cultural lineages as well as local spaces. Understanding the built environments of, by and for such mixtures of minority ethnic communities is central to understanding the evolving nature of urban Australia as the nation’s broader demography continues its diversification. It may be adopted by marketers to varying extents, as exemplified by the three examples presented in this chapter, but Australian urban culture is increasingly a complex mosaic, in which the denotation of ethnically-specific precincts and occasional attempts at architectonic formalization try to capture and reify, in the expectation (hope) that the ‘authentic’ nature of the traditional vernacular environment can be channelled to the service of commerce. Perhaps it can.

Notes 1. David Clark, ‘The Shop Within? The Architectural Evidence for Medieval Shops’, Architectural History 43 (2000): 58. 2. Elizabeth Cromley, ‘Cultural Embeddedness in Vernacular Architecture’, Building Research & Information 36, no. 3 (2008): 302. 3. Paul Oliver, Built to Meet Needs: Cultural Issues in Vernacular Architecture (London: Routledge, 2006). 4. Daniel Maudlin, ‘Crossing Boundaries: Revisiting the Thresholds of Vernacular Architecture’, Vernacular Architecture 41, no. 1 (2010): 13. 5. Ibid., 1. 6. Ronald W. Brunskill, An Illustrated Handbook of Vernacular Architecture (London: Faber, 1971): 26. 7. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 8. Maudlin, ‘Crossing Boundaries’, 13. 9. Sanaz Alian and Stephen Wood, ‘Stranger Adaptations: Public/private Interfaces, Adaptations, and Ethnic Diversity in Bankstown, Sydney’, Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability 12, no. 1 (2019): 99.

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10. Kim Dovey and Stephen Wood, ‘Public/private Urban Interfaces: Type, Adaptation, Assemblage’, Journal of Urbanism International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability 8, no. 1 (2015). 11. David Beynon, ‘Beyond Big Gold Mountain: Chinese-Australian Settlement and Industry as Integral to Colonial Australia’, Fabrications: Journal of Architectural Historians Australia New Zealand 29, no. 2 (2019): 184–206. 12. Ien Ang, ‘At home in Asia? Sydney’s Chinatown and Australia’s “Asian Century”, International Journal of Cultural Studies 19, no. 3 (2016): 263. 13. Ibid., 261; J. L. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Ethnicity Inc., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 26. 14. Ibid., 140. 15. Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (1954), Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme 1954 Report, accessed 23 February 2023, https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/policy-and-strategy/planning-for-melbourne/ melbournes-strategic-planning-history/melbourne-metropolitan-planning-scheme-1954-report. 16. ‘Benh Thanh Market’, Saigon Today, accessed 12 November 2020, https://saigontoday.net/ben-thanh-market/ (2020). 17. Gregory Burgess Architects (GBA), ‘Victoria Street Gateway’, website project notes, accessed 1 February, 2017, http://www.gbarch.com.au/projects/2013/victoria-street-gateway/ 18. C-K Lee, ‘Pai-fang: Gateways to History and Socio-politics of Indigenous Villages’, The New Territories, M. Sci. Conserv. Thesis, University of Hong Kong (2013). 19. Chen Tien-Shi, ‘Reconstruction and Localization of Ethnic Culture: The Case of Yokohama Chinatown as a tourist Spot’, Senri Ethnological Studies 76 (2010): 29–38, 35; Kay Anderson, ‘“Chinatown Re-oriented”: A Critical Analysis of Recent Redevelopment Schemes in a Melbourne and Sydney Enclave’, Australian Geographical Studies 18, no. 2 (1990): 138; Gertrud Hüwelmaier, ‘Enhancing Spiritual Security in Berlin’s Asian Bazaars’, New Diversities 18, no. 1 (2016). 20. Dinh Quoc Phuong and Derham Groves, ‘Sense of Place in Hanoi’s Shop-House: Influences of Local Belief on Interior Architecture’, Journal of Interior Design 36, no. 1 (2010): 1–20. 21. Ibid., 13. 22. Ibid., 17. 23. Kathryn Terzano, ‘Commodification of Transitioning Ethnic Enclaves’, Behavioral Sciences 4 (2014): 347. 24. P. Spoonley and C. Meares, ‘Laissez Faire Multiculturalism and Relational Embeddedness: Ethnic Precincts in Auckland’, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 3, no. 1 (2011). 25. All Together Now, ‘Challenging Racialised Discourse Project 2018–2021: Quantitative Findings from the Analysis of 724 Media Pieces Collected over 26 Months between April 2018 and June 2020’, May 2021, accessed 5 July 2022,

https://alltogethernow.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Quantitative-Findings-Media-Monitoring-.

pdf. 26. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016 Census Quickstats: Mowbray (Tas), accessed 10 October 2020, https:// quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/SSC60432. 27. Bhutanese Kirat Society of Australia (BKSoA) Inc, accessed 23 January 2023, https://www.facebook.com/ bkbat/. 28. Frances accessed

Vinall, 10

‘Colourful

Culture

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as 2020

Nepalese

Community

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Celebrates

Tihar’,

The

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colourful-culture-as-nepalese-community-celebrates-tihar/. 29. Federation Square, ‘Jatra: Nepalese Street Festival’ (2019), accessed 10 November 2020, https://fedsquare. com/events/jatra-nepalese-street-festival. 30. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016 Census Quickstats: Mowbray (Tas), accessed 10 October 2020, https:// quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/SSC60432.

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Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016 Census Quickstats: Richmond (Vic), accessed 10 October 2020, https://­quickstats. censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/SED27003?opendocument. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016 Census Quickstats: Brunswick (Vic), accessed 10 October 2020, https://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/ SED21303?opendocument. 31. City of Launceston, My Place. My Future: A Plan for Living, Working and Playing North of the River (2019), accessed  10 October, 2020, https://www.launcestoncitydeal.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/195863/ MPMF-Plan.pdf. 32. Ruth Fincher and Kurt Iveson, Planning and Diversity in the City: Redistribution, Recognition and Encounter (London: Macmillan, 2008). 33. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 117. 34. Esther Han, ‘Signing Up: Thai Town Gets Recognised as a Cultural Hub’, Sydney Morning Herald,

(2013),

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signing-up-thai-town-gets-recognised-as-a-cultural-hub-20131021-2vx3o. 35. Sa. Mazumdar, Sh. Mazumdar, F. Docuyanan and C. McLaughlin, ‘Creating a Sense of Place: The VietnameseAmericans and Little Saigon’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 20, no. 4 (2000): 321. 36. Robert Brown and Daniel Maudlin, ‘Concepts of Vernacular Architecture’, in The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory, ed. Stephen Cairns, C. Greig Crysler and Hilde Heynen (London: Sage, 2012): 353.

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13  Translating spaces: Speculative landscape futures for new climate diasporas

  LIZZIE YARINA, PENNY ALLAN AND MARTIN BRYANT

Introduction Rising seas, storms and other catastrophes associated with climate change place coastal citizens around the world at risk. Pre-emptive in situ adaptive and protectionist responses are now widely recognized as necessary but, increasingly, some Oceanic nations are already incorporating human mobility directly into their adaptation plans: the prospect of planned relocation is becoming a reality.1 For some this will mean relocating into non-customary lands within their own country, for others it will entail migration to countries overseas. For Indigenous Pacific peoples, climate change migration can threaten cultural integrity. It poses a disconnection with autochthonous land and sea, which ‘are integrally part of’ Pacific Islander identities.2 Mi’kmaw scholar Marie Battiste describes that Indigenous peoples ‘inherently belong to’ the ecologies they inhabit.3 The landscapes, both land and sea, are thus vernacular: co-produced by place-based communities and their geographies over time; and embodied in cultural knowledge systems and knowledge building processes.4 Conserving these vernacular landscapes protects the rights of Pacific Islanders. It is both a long-term benefit pertaining to cultural diversity for all humanity, and recognition of the importance of climate justice.5 How might climate-linked migration happen without losing cultural practices and knowledge that are tied to Oceanic communities’ vernacular landscapes? Theorists of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) highlight Indigenous world-views which inherently evolve through adaptive practices and ecological thinking.6 These land- and sea-based cultures are connected to local ecosystems, but also offer the potential to adapt and transform new or different ecosystems. Indigenous peoples of the Pacific have, after all, migrated and traded across the Pacific for centuries7 and, while this does not alleviate the need for reparations for the impacts of anthropogenically induced climate change, or the need to transition away from a carbon-based society, it does suggest that, in the face of inevitable degradation of homeland, food and habitat security, there are possibilities for adapting culture to new landscapes. Pacific diasporas who have already settled in communities overseas have begun to adapt cultural practices to the land, sea and urban contexts of their new environments.8 For people who make the decision to migrate and gather in communities as a result of climate risk, these emergent practices offer ways of retaining and promoting Pacific cultural identity within the places of the diaspora. Following Ageyman, Devine-Wright and Prange, relocation and mobility in response to climate risks must be a considered as not only spatial, but also symbolic and emotional.9 In the face of climate-linked migration and displacement, can design processes oriented towards cultural recognition contribute to climate equity?

This chapter explores the role of spatial design that looks specifically through the lens of the landscape vernacular. While by definition the vernacular cannot be re-designed, particularly by outside experts, design might stimulate landscape vernaculars in new places that have their own already-existing cultures and landscapes. We place existing literature from Pacific studies and climate migration studies in conversation with design-research in order to understand how landscape design practice can better engage with new climate mobilities. In a speculative landscape architecture studio, we developed culturally driven spatial explorations with an ex situ Fijian community in greater Wellington, New Zealand, in anticipation that this community will expand as climate change risks continue to grow in Fiji. Developing speculative propositions for alternative futures in dialogue with climate diaspora communities allowed us to explore three ideas which are fundamental to an understanding of how adaptation can occur in the context of landscape vernacular and migration: that the vernacular in landscape is less about architectural form and type and more about a process that links traditional knowledge to the practices and contexts of landscape adaptation10; that design knowledge embedded in Pacific Indigenous socio-spatial practices has the potential to inform the environments of climate diasporas11; and that design processes that respect and support traditional ecological knowledge can help embed landscape vernacular values in the diaspora’s new landscapes.

Pacific vernacular landscapes and climate mobilities Vernacular landscapes and cultural identity in Oceania In design disciplines, discussions of vernacular and heritage tend to focus on architecture and urbanism. But in the Pacific, the shaping of terrestrial and ocean landscapes over time by everyday patterns of tending and transforming is also vernacular. Vernacular landscapes, created through cumulative interactions between communities and their environments, include traditional infrastructures such as sagua constructed in the Mariana Islands to maintain canoe access through reefs,12 and shifting cultivation practices in Fiji’s highland villages to maintain soil quality over time.13 The cumulative everyday practices transform the environment. While buildings are relatively fixed, landscapes are dynamic, affording an adaptive, and contingent exchange between practices and an ever-changing environment. The vernacular landscape is process just as much as it is material. Indigenous cultural values that underpin vernacular landscapes are linked to a holistic sense of the earth, and the position of humans within it. Cultural identity is embedded with ecological knowledge.14 Water can be as much part of these identities as land.15 For example, some island-dwellers including those of the Torres Strait blur boundaries between land and sea, and reefs or fish traps often have place names.16 Sea routes are important heritage, as are the roots to land.17 Heritage is thus evident in the vernacular landscape’s relationships and responsibilities between things, and physical and spiritual realms.18 In Fiji, Vanua is a central part of Indigenous knowledge and culture, referring to both the physical land and its inhabitants.19 On the Fijian island of Ovalau, interpretations of Vanua descend from Rakavono, the first inhabitant of Lovoni, referring to ‘people, land, sea, traditions and customs, traditional status and leadership, relationships, space, spirit, silence, respect and honour that is accorded to every part of the land and every relationship among all living things’.20 Vanua not only refers to the physical land and sea, but to its interconnectedness with social, spiritual and knowledge systems. Although the notion of Vanua has a strong connection to specific places, the Pasifika scholar Albert Refiti has explored how, in the context of diaspora, the notion of vā or ‘relational space’, alongside

Translating Spaces, New Climate Diasporas 231

the architecture of the fale, has been re-articulated ‘to create a new social and political reality for Samoans and Pacific People’.21 In both cases relationality, between material and spiritual worlds is sited in spaces important to the everyday lives of a people. Ecological connections between people and nature continue to operate as markers of resilience to climate change and other risks. For example, breadfruit and mango fruiting patterns, fish abundance, bees nesting and the flight patterns of frigate birds are all important indicators of climate events such as cyclones or tsunamis.22 Indigenous connections between people and landscape reflect the co-production between Pacific Islander societies and their natural environments: a deep knowledge of natural systems, as Lagi suggests, shapes how these communities engage with and shape their environments over time.23 These practices over time produce vernacular landscapes, making environmental adaptations ranging from fish weirs to cultivation sites. This culturally developed adaptive capacity is inherently resilient.

Climate risks and displacement threaten vernacular landscapes However, today the scale of change brought on by the climate crisis calls into question whether existing landscapes and landscape practices can be adapted in place to more intense storms, increased water temperatures and sea-level rise. For example, traditional fishing infrastructures and cultivation spaces may be threatened by the shifting climatic zones of flora and fauna. Small Pacific Island nations are uniquely vulnerable to climate change. Low-lying coral atolls (i.e. the islands of Tuvalu and Kiribati) may be inundated with only a small amount of sea-level rise which threatens the delicate freshwater lenses and causes damage to surrounding corals through ocean acidification. It will be difficult for their Indigenous people to live there, no matter how adaptive their cultures are. While volcanic islands, including the majority of Fiji and Samoa, have high ground interiors, these mountainous zones are often difficult to inhabit, with most existing settlements encircling coastal regions. Even larger continental islands such as Papua face risks of coastal flooding, delta inundations and inland river flooding from more intense downpours.24 Fiji is an archipelago of over 300 islands, a combination of coral and volcanic island types, whose palmlined shores draw more tourists than any other Pacific Island destination.25 Increasingly violent cyclones threaten all types of islands in the Pacific, tearing the roofs off houses, stripping trees and soils of crops, and bringing in deadly storm surges from the ocean. The immediate risks associated with climate change impacts were dramatically illustrated by 2016’s Cyclone Winston, which caused damages totaling $1.4 billion and forty-four deaths. Some 40,000 homes and 40 per cent of Fiji’s population were affected.26 The exact extents of future climate change impacts remain uncertain, making planning – at both the individual and government level – extremely difficult.27 There is adaptive capacity embodied in traditional ecological knowledge and practices, but this may have diminished in many places where Indigenous practices have been overlaid with engineered agriculture and market-place economies, based on the ‘universalistic, not social’ values of Western science and globalization networks.28 Intra-national climate change adaptation is further complicated by Fiji’s traditional (mataqali) land ownership system, which ties pieces of land to specific clan ancestries.29 This system was formalized by Fiji’s British governor at the turn of the twentieth century, making most land inaccessible to anyone not of the land’s specific lineage.30 If a clan has no high ground, it is unclear where there will be anywhere that they can relocate to in their home nation, short of small amounts of freehold land. In Fiji, as with many Pacific Islands, rates of customary land ownership are high: 90 per cent of land remains held by iTaukei, or Indigenous Fijians.31

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The senescence of coral reefs and fisheries, flooding of coastal lands and the destruction of traditional spaces all affect the current fabric of the landscape which affects the practices that make up the landscape vernacular. Adapting in place may be preferable, but relocation is increasingly being identified as an alternate response to climate change, particularly in Pacific Island sites.32 Pacific heritages are placed at risk with the prospect of climate-induced mobility. Any future loss of intangible cultural heritage and vernacular landscapes is not easily quantified and rarely included in climate change impact assessments.33 For example, repeated loss of sea walls and village flooding prompted the whole of Vunidogoloa village to migrate in 2010 from the mouth of a river delta in Vanua Levu to a safer uphill location, 2 kilometres away. The relocation was within the clan’s customary land, but the village’s fishermen found it hard to adapt to not being close to the sea, and the elders felt a spiritual loss of the traditional land.34 Vunidogoloa is undoubtedly the first of many: the Fijian Government has been planning to move another 830 communities in the near future35 and has established an official Relocation Guideline.36 Inevitably this is likely to result in the migration and relocation of the Fijian diaspora within their customary lands and the Fijian archipelago and may eventually displace many to other countries.37

Migration as adaptation? Fiji’s current adaptation policy emphasizes components that include disaster response capacity, hazard mapping, community participation, early warning systems and food security.38 However, on the ground, many families and communities respond as a last resort to serious environmental threats through migration. Migration may also be triggered by climate-linked risks in combination with other push and pull factors. Increasingly, it is being advocated as a form of adaptation for Pacific Island nations. Pacific Island cultures stem from a long history of mobility, with migration being an essential form of adaptation to resource scarcities associated with island environments.39 Migration as adaptation can take a number of forms: domestic relocation including movement within customary lands, relocation outside customary lands (i.e. to freehold land or to another group’s land).40 International migration may occur independently or as part of a planned community relocation process. While colonization and the postcolonial nation-state have drawn hard boundaries across the Pacific, historically these nations were closely intertwined. Some nations have even incorporated migration into their adaptation policies, most notably, Kiribati’s ‘Migration with Dignity’ programme.41 Pacific scholars advocate for planning for these possibilities: ‘a proactive approach to migration and relocation […] will enable communities and their individual members to be well prepared if voluntary migration or forced relocation is necessary’.42 One potential destination for the Fijian climate diaspora is New Zealand. New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori are Polynesian cousins of many threatened Pacific Island nations, having migrated to Aotearoa from the Cook Islands and French Polynesia.43 Today, the nation’s population incorporates nearly 15 per cent Māori and 7.4 per cent other Pacific peoples.44 New Zealand’s migration policy recognizes its position as a Pacific and Pasifika archipelago with relatively open migration policies with many Oceanic nations. Colloquially, it is termed the ‘land of milk and honey’ by many Pacific Islanders, a site of education and opportunity.45 This history makes New Zealand a logical site for Pacific climate-induced migrants, and scholars are advocating for expanding legal pathways for this type of migration.46 However, this research has significance for other sites as well, such as Australia, which also has a growing Pasifika diaspora. As in New Zealand, the Pasifika diaspora in Australia is adapting both material behaviour and spatial cultures to the new urban landscapes of cities.47

Translating Spaces, New Climate Diasporas 233

More recently, New Zealand has even gone so far as to explore migration options for ‘climate refugees’, with accommodations for environmental migrants having been included in both the Labour and Green party platforms, whose coalition formed the recent government under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. While the plan was put on hold after feedback from Pacific leaders who preferred to avoid victimizing language associated with climate refugees,48 it illustrates a willingness on the part of New Zealand to help accommodate an influx of those displaced by climate change – a contemporary policy stance at odds with those of most other Western nations. New Zealand currently hosts a small but well-embedded community of Fijians, who migrated to the country in waves associated with seasonal work schemes, professional employment schemes (especially nursing) and in eras of political instability. Church congregations and community associations play an important role in maintaining this ex situ community, who must cope with their own sets of risks and adaptations associated with maintaining culture in a new place and adapting to the context of Western lifestyles. If there is a further increase in climate migrants, what might help Fijian migrants retain cultural values and practices in the New Zealand context?

Can vernacular landscapes be part of climate mobility? Indigenous forms of knowledge, including those which are embedded in vernacular landscapes, have been identified as important for addressing climate change risks.49 In the context of climate-linked migration and displacement, the practices and spaces of landscape vernaculars may also suggest mechanisms for cultural adaptations in the sites of new climate diasporas. The ability for those displaced by climate change to relocate is an issue of human rights: as Leckie argues ‘what is needed […] are laws and policies that, in effect, ensure houses for lost houses and land for lost land’.50 Climate equity calls for not only the right to move, but also the right to interpret these cultural values in ways which are specific to the migration destination, including the creation of new spaces which support displaced cultures. Farbotko and colleagues note that ‘place attachment may be a resource for, rather than a barrier to, successful resettlement’ by linking new spaces to preexisting cultural values.51 Creating space for new vernacular landscapes, then, may provide one tool for improving the outcomes of climate-linked migrations and relocations.

Designed versus vernacular environments The professional practices of design and planning have a fraught history in relationship to Indigenous and place-based communities. Simplified representations – maps, plans, diagrams – leveraged by built environment ‘experts’ privilege top-down ways of seeing which obscure and often ultimately eradicate local knowledge.52 For example, in her study of the planning of Ciudad Guayana by an international contingent of designers and planners, Lisa Peattie depicts an epistemological gap between the experts with their categories and representations, and the stories of citizens making their lives.53 Design disciplines have traditionally been aligned with the powerful, and design projects are often complicit with the displacement and dispossession of the Indigenous peoples, racial and ethnic minorities, and the urban and rural poor. As Mike Austin has observed, in the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand, attempts at hybridity in design are ultimately shaped by power.54 Furthermore, landscape and urban design as conventionally understood exist in tension with notions of vernacular space. Samoan architectural scholar Albert Refiti observes that architectural drawings may reproduce the form and material of vernaculars such as the Samoan fale, but they do not necessarily

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capture fundamental aspects of the space, including the performance of construction and the spaces’ cosmological dimensions.55 While vernacular landscapes are created by the cumulative actions of many hands and minds over time and in dialogue with ecological systems, designed landscapes are typically associated with singular, expert authors. Designed environments often consider time, repair and maintenance, but they tend to be constructed all at once. For diasporas already displaced by climate change, neither conventional notions of design or vernacular landscapes produced in traditional lands are sufficient for translating cultural values to new, already-occupied landscapes. Yet, for new climate diasporas, it is important to create spaces that allow cultural values to persist. The architectural anthropologist Paul Memmott shows that in the context of architecture, ‘Indigenous “behaviour settings” are being reinvented from traditional practices and combined with global architectural attributes.’56 And as Pacific architectural scholar James Miller demonstrates in his study of Marshallese space,57 important spatial design knowledge is endogenous to the vernacular architectures and Indigenous peoples of the Marshall Islands, and must also be fundamental to designing and planning for climate relocations. Like vernacular architectures, vernacular landscapes are places where cultural practices and environments can co-evolve. Vernacular landscapes embody knowledge and practices that connect geographies, ecologies and culture: for Indigenous and other place-based communities, these reflect the close connections between physical space and cultural practices. While it is essential to be attentive to design’s history of dispossessing and disempowering marginalized communities, the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design are unique in their capacity to imagine and visualize alternative futures. In The Great Derangement, author Amitav Ghosh58 argues that ‘the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination’. While he is addressing the work of writers and artists, we argue the potential of a similar role for spatial designers. Following Irazabal and Appadurai, we argue that new sensitivities are required in order to design and plan for the ‘ethnoscapes’ emergent in new, globalized, social and spatial orders.59 The exploration of possible futures – in our case through design rather than fiction – is essential for reimagining how humanity is to live in the climate crisis. For those already being displaced by climate change, the alternative futures are particularly urgent. Through this lens, the next part of this chapter explores how a collaborative and speculative approach to design research might offer a realm of possible landscape-based strategies for new Pacific climate diasporas. These propositions consider vernacular landscape processes as drivers for cultural landscapes.

Case analysis: Speculative cultural landscapes for Fijian migrants The proposition The aim of the design-research project described here is to explore the potential of design in developing speculative futures for climate migrant communities that can help promote the creation of new landscapes embedded with vernacular knowledge and processes. This conceptual framing was tested during a research-level landscape architecture studio in Fiji and New Zealand in 2017.60 This method of investigation promotes Irazabal’s call that, under increasing global dislocations of ethnic communities, ‘Urban design and planning pedagogy should incorporate theoretical and practical exercises for students to get educated, sensitized, and skilled in the participatory analysis and production of ethnoscapes.’61 Projects were developed in accordance with that call and evolved through iterative dialogue with community members in both countries. Recognizing that design has a history of top-down practice, the research team engaged with members of the Wellington Fijian community to develop an array of spatial propositions for how socio-­ spatial practices embedded in Fijian vernacular landscapes can be translated to existing Pakeha and hybrid

Translating Spaces, New Climate Diasporas 235

spaces in the metropolitan area. These collaborators were enthusiastic to engage with the work, acknowledging that the Fijian community in New Zealand receives less engagement than Pasifika groups with larger populations. The relationship with communities in this context was productive precisely because the projects were speculative; there was no pressure or expectation that the projects would be realized. Rather than identifying particular interventions, a series of speculative designs focused on different spatial aspects of Fijian cultural practices were used to provoke discussions about how existing spaces in New Zealand might be re-imagined. The following sections outline the process and outcomes of the studio.

The process Early in the process, in addition to engaging with cultural landscapes and scholarship on the Pacific, the design-research team consisting of three faculty researchers and six student-level assistants began to build an exchange with the Wellington Fijian community over coffee and in the classroom. Out of this dialogue some clear cultural issues emerged. Firstly, migration can be traumatic for Indigenous peoples: Fijians whom we spoke to felt loss associated with migration away from families and culturally significant spaces as well as familiar climates, geographies and foods. This loss was significant for the culture’s future: parents and grandparents were concerned with future generations losing access to cultural values, traditions, language. At the same time, they worried about these generations performing well in New Zealand’s education systems and careers. Money was also a concern, specifically economic difficulties associated with high costs of housing, food and transportation, and difficulties with participation in a wage economy. Our liaisons identified the importance of common space as a place to share past and present culture as well as new traditions. We learned of the spiritual and physical importance of the relationship between land, water, church, storytelling, food and sport. These themes were carried forward into the design research proposals. In parallel, map-based analyses were developed to address the multiple scales of migration, from regional movement to everyday spaces. We contextualized a local-scale conceptual response concurrently with multi-scalar mapping research. Mapping across multiple scales can ‘offer opportunities for resilience via connecting diverse actors, scales and forms of knowledge’.62 Considering how local landscapes are tied to larger regional and global systems, the mappings not only describe what is (e.g. how global trade operates at the expense of the local, or histories of labour migration), but also what could be (e.g. how the growing desire to find and celebrate local differences in the face of homogenizing global forces might drive alternative cultural practices).63 Multi-scalar mapping research also explored the theme of environmental risk between Fiji and New Zealand with an eye towards the relationship between landscape and resilient cultural practice. At a zoomed-out scale, mapping of cyclone tracks and geotectonic plates informed zoomed-in studies specifically exploring the impacts of Cyclone Winston on Fiji (Figure 13.1). The mappings thus provided a visual narrative to help explain the modern migrations of these societies and the geopolitical underpinnings for this mobility. Each designer used the cartographic work to influence local-scaled speculations for the Wellington region. For example, maps which examined transportation and trade routes across the Asia Pacific region led to local strategies where the focus was on issues of food imports, and migrant labour in New Zealand. Mappings which looked at human histories of migration led to proposals which emphasized narrative and storytelling. Themes like these went on to become key drivers for speculative design schemes. The systems-based multi-scalar technique not only was appropriate for Pacific Island cultures, but also showed a link between the local proposal and the island-wide or regional ripple effects.

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Fig. 13.1  Hurricane Winston response in Fiji and connection to the regional scale. Drawing by Rebecca Freeman.

As design propositions were refined, supported by existing scholarship on Pacific migrations, shared themes developed: the importance of public space which allowed the community to make a statement about their culture; and the idea that the spatial translation of culture can be supported by ‘seeds’ – small-scale interventions that might enhance everyday activities of the community, with the potential for a ripple effect of larger impact related to long-term adaptive processes. To this end, the small-scale projects were explored not as static objects, but as unfolding systems over time which could catalyse multiple possible futures. The development of the propositions was accompanied by several presentations / symposia with members of the Wellington Fijian community, who were invited to critique and provide feedback on the projects. These suggestions shaped the speculative outcomes. The response to the work was positive and set in motion possible future collaborations. A PDF booklet documenting the process and the student work was shared with collaborators at the completion of the project.

Design propositions: Hybrid landscapes for climate migrants Speculative spaces are not top-down visions of how the world ought to be. Rather, they are exploratory images that open community-based discussion about what possible futures might look like, and what type

Translating Spaces, New Climate Diasporas 237

or character of spaces might facilitate these futures. The proposition considered how spaces in Aotearoa/ New Zealand might become ‘hybrid landscapes’, embedded with ‘DNA’ not only of the existing local context (including its own landscapes and cultures) but also with cultural values of the migrant community which they are intended to serve. Importantly there is no hegemony: the intention is for migrant communities to bring in values that they express in ways that suit the local landscape and its cultural values. Like community-based resource and hazard mapping projects,64 we propose that speculative spatial propositions can be visual tools that bring together traditional and expert knowledge, creating a foundation for dialogue and future planning. While these propositions are importantly not traditional landscape vernaculars per se, they suggest cultural landscape-based tools and mechanisms for communities to consider as cultures adapt to diasporic contexts. The speculative proposals, a series of small spatial interventions in the greater Wellington area, experimented with ways that spatial design could assist in adapting traditional practices to a new context. All expressed different facets of Fijian culture and were designed not only to serve the cultural needs of current and future Fijian populations, but also to serve all people of Wellington. They fulfil the socio-spatial needs of this transitioned community while retaining the important characteristics of the pre-existing places. As climate change forces Pacific Islanders, and perhaps all societies, to become increasingly mobile, these projects begin to suggest how design can allow place-based cultures to adapt, even if their homelands become threatened. Most of the design projects were centred in and around Kilbirnie, a waterfront suburb in Wellington with a strong Fijian community. They were sited to form a cluster or network of cultural spaces across the neighbourhood that anyone could use, but that would hold particular value for Fijians by creating space for cultural practices. Because of the nature of the network, the collection of projects highlighted the importance of Fijian culture in Kilbirnie while identifying the significant contribution of Fijians to the cultural life of the neighbourhood as a whole. The Kilbirnie design proposals focused on promoting cultural practices that enhanced the relationship between culture and place in adaptive ways. ‘The Food Co-op Garden’ (developed by Leocadie Pelbois) was a proposal for a community garden in a central location already significant to many Kilbirnie residents because of its library and sports facilities. The researchers were mindful that while much of the advice we received was from elders in the Fijian Wellington community, the role of the young is crucial in carrying on and adapting cultural values. So, we proposed a co-operative structure of management where cultural practices of cultivation could be practised and passed on to younger members of the community (Figures  13.2 and 13.3). The proposal was centrally sited, and so would not be exclusive: the potential was that the migrant community’s values would be seen as an adaptation of the environment that would encourage local non-Fijian communities to join in. ‘A Fijian Story Space’ in Kilbirnie (developed by Ninon Migayrou) was designed for a site near the first Fijian church which was historically the heart of the Fijian community. The proposal encompassed the space across the road from the church in which she designed a wall with a three-dimensional quality, designed as a medium for a future mural and storytelling device. The resulting intervention was intended as an adaptable artwork expressing traditional and contemporary stories related to Fijian cultural life, and as a piece of form and space, a playground inviting children to physically interact with both traditional narratives and more contemporary or even forward-looking stories of their ex situ communities (Figure  13.3). The visual nature of the artwork symbolically expressed the importance of oral narratives as a way of learning and sharing. This project suggests the significance of what Paul Memmott terms ‘behaviour settings’ which are designed to be culturally appropriate and attuned to cultural landscapes.65

238 Design and the Vernacular: Interpretations for Contemporary Architecture

Fig. 13.2  The Lovo Hut. Perspective: Gathering space on Evans Bay Pier. Drawing by Freddie Bensemann.

Fig. 13.3  A New Home in the Pacific: A Catalyst for Pacific Communal Living in Martinborough Village. Site context map. Drawing by William Pearce.

New climate diasporas may find themselves in communities where tensions already exist, and several designs explored how spatial design might mediate complex interests. ‘The Lovo Hut’ (developed by Freddie Bensemann) began with a site on Kilbirnie’s waterfront that seemed difficult at first: a narrow strip of underutilized waterfront land squeezed between boat moorings, a drydock, caravans and a carpark. The proposal included a place to catch, clean and cook fish in a traditional earthen oven (lovo) that takes all day to slowly cook a meal. The proposal established a potential relationship with Māori cultures who have

Translating Spaces, New Climate Diasporas 239

Fig. 13.4  A New Home in the Pacific: A Catalyst for Pacific Communal Living in Martinborough Village. Perspective drawing by William Pearce.

similar practices (namely, the hāngi): the design’s intent was to set up a place where these Pasifika cultural practices might operate side by side, or even share space, respectfully. It also set up a tension between the extended practice of catching fish, tending the fire and cooking the food and the more sporadic activities associated with cars and boats. The design established the possibility that people would co-occupy the space by crossing the narrow strip, encouraging accidental encounters that might extend to being invited for a meal. As a result, the project aimed at enhancing neighbourly connections and the strength of the Kilbirnie community as a whole (Figure 13.4). By emphasizing water-based activities including fishing and boating, this project also acknowledged that designing for Pasifika diasporas might include not only cultural landscapes but also cultural oceanscapes. With similar intentions, ‘A New Home in the Pacific’ (developed by William Pearce) focused outside the city centre in the vineyard region of Martinborough. Many Pacific migrants travel to New Zealand’s rural areas for jobs in agriculture. Since rugby union football is popular throughout the Pacific, we chose an underutilized public space next to a rugby field as an opportunity to bring Pasifika cultures together. The proposal was a flexible and inclusive space that could begin as a simple shelter in which to sit and watch rugby, developing over time to accommodate cooking, eating and the practice of arts and crafts. In this project the flexible programming of the space was open-ended enough to accommodate the needs of a number of cultural groups and invite new adaptive behaviours which might influence the long-term resilience of the Martinborough community as a whole. These two design concepts (‘The Lovo Hut’ and ‘A New Home in the Pacific’) show how it might be possible to be explicitly cultural, creating relationships between art and sport, and between land and water, but at the same time be inclusive. While our collaboration through the lens of a design studio provided a productive opportunity to learn together without the pressure of implementation, it is important to acknowledge that the format also created limitations. We were constrained by time, although conversations continued beyond the final presentation and conversation. Design researchers struggled with their positionality, asking how design could engage respectfully yet productively with cultures outside of their own. These were important reflections, given

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design’s many colonial and racist legacies, and we hope will lead to improved reflexivity in future. Yet, with the guidance of our community collaborators, the designers were ultimately able to develop speculative projects that spoke to the needs and aspirations of Wellington-based Fijians.

From speculative cultural landscapes to climate diaspora vernaculars The aim of the speculative design propositions was to envision how new landscapes could help support the cultural practices of Pacific Islanders likely to be increasingly displaced by climate change. The projects helped identify spatial strategies such as waterfront gathering spaces, cooking facilities and cultivation sites. Importantly, the projects also helped identify challenges to implementing such interventions. Questions and complications emerged in dialogue with community members and students. How would these spaces be maintained? How would they be funded? Could they contribute to economic as well as cultural development? The design process exposed challenges around permitting spaces for unconventional uses, and around designing for cultural practices without being exclusionary, particularly in a country where the Māori continue to fight for the return of lands acquired through treaty breaches. Most interestingly, the explorations align with the findings of Gharbaoui and Blocher, who argue for the importance of policies for land ownership and management in resettlement projects that align with the land-based values of Fijian communities.66

Conclusion: Designing for climate diasporas This project examined whether and how a speculative design process might inform spaces of climatelinked migration and relocation, and how climate-displaced Pacific cultures might work in new places with traditional vernaculars. The design research was carried out through a research-based landscape architecture studio, in collaboration with Fijian residents in Wellington, New Zealand. Speculative propositions considered how landscape adaptations might contribute to Fijian cultural practices, through the lenses of sport, food, storytelling, growing and fishing. These propositions were never intended to be implemented: the visualizations were used as tools for dialogue and imagination. The process revealed not only what types of spaces urban planners might include for climate migrants, but also what barriers – physical, political, social, intellectual – might exist for creating spaces in cities intent on encouraging new hybrid landscapes for those displaced by climate change. The research shed light on our key questions about landscape vernacular and migration. The vernacular in landscape is less about architectural form and type and more about a process that links traditional knowledge to the practices and contexts of landscape adaptation. Because landscape vernaculars are the product of an adaptive coevolution between communities and environments over time, they reflect a process rather than a product. They cannot be designed. But because they represent a very deep connection between people and place, when communities migrate to very different environments the dislocation can be extreme and disorienting.67 This work looks at how those involved in the planning and design of urban environments can ease that rupture without imposing external visions of the future. Working closely and relatively slowly with a relocated community gave us time to understand their needs and aspirations. Rather than imposing a top-down expert-led ‘solution’, speculative design encouraged an open-ended and collaborative process allowing the community to imagine possible adaptive futures in a new place with very different ecological and urban systems. Small-scale design propositions for the public realm, developed with collaborative and culturally appropriate processes, can offer starting points for larger-scale resilience transformations.68 Mappings and speculative visions can be tools for bringing together expert and traditional knowledge and practices towards envisioning new, adapted landscapes.69 Mapping

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cross-scalar connections, considering the ripple effects of catalytic ‘seeds’, and ongoing dialogue were all essential to this process. As Miller suggests, design knowledge embedded in Indigenous socio-spatial practice has the potential to inform successful spaces within Pacific climate diasporas, and in designing for new climate diasporas, ‘Indigenous knowledge is far more important to the lives of the communities than […] global/ western knowledge’.70 Understanding socio-spatial practices with close connections to landscape, from cooking in in-ground lovos to collecting food from the land and sea, provided a starting point for translating traditional cultural landscape values to new environments. Creating space for landscape practices to accumulate and develop over time may help transform diaspora environments. It enables everyday practices to be embedded with knowledges about past and new natural systems which provide key components of cultural identity. The role of the designer in this context is not to create the practices but to acknowledge them and give them room to flourish and evolve in their new location, under the management of end users.71 This requires a respectful understanding of traditional knowledge and the ability to assemble complex and sometimes competing interests and values into physical spaces. In doing so, the spaces might become a tool for climate equity. Given that these skills and tools are not widely standard in design pedagogy, the studio-based process described here supports calls to incorporate culturally based design processes into design and planning curriculums.72 Design processes that respect and support traditional ecological knowledge can help embed landscape vernacular values in the diaspora’s new landscapes. The research offers an alternative model for designers engaging with communities displaced by climate change. Climate change is already transforming many human environments in Oceania, and imagination will be essential to living with climate-changed futures.73 Because they are inherently collaborative, richly visualized community-driven speculative designs could become tools for creating interactions with other communities, planners and funders in order to realize collective visions, and over time constitute new landscapes that conserve cultural values and engage new ecologies in the site of the migrant community. For many Pasifika communities, this should involve sensitivity to the relational and spiritual dimensions of space.74 However, it is essential to understand that cultural entanglements and resulting hybrid designs are shaped by power.75 This work must acknowledge and work against design and planning’s top-down legacy, instead prioritizing lateral and cross-cultural sharing of knowledge and power. Thus, designing with new climate diasporas must be understood as a political negotiation. Among members of migrant communities and between the multiple groups who are invested in the futures of particular places, priorities for collective futures are likely to vary. They might also clash with existing political frameworks, particularly in terms of the legal realities of land, property and citizenship. Attention to the politics of translated spaces in turn requires a critical assessment of who owns and manages land, and may in turn call for property frameworks, such as cooperatives or community land trusts. The framework of the vernacular asked us to reconsider the notion of the singular, expert designer, and explore how small-scale design could contribute to landscapes produced by many hands, over time. Vernacular landscapes are places where cultural practices and environments can co-evolve. The idea of ‘translating landscapes’ offers an approach for considering how place-based and space-based cultural values and priorities can be explored and adapted in the context of climate diasporas.

Notes 1. Carol Farbotko, Celia McMichael, Olivia Dun, Hedda Ransan-Cooper, Karen McNamara and Fanny Thornton, ‘Transformative Mobilities in the Pacific: Promoting Adaptation and Development in a Changing Climate’, Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies 5, no. 3 (2018): 393–407.

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2. Gharbaoui Dalila and Julia Blocher, ‘The Reason Land Matters: Relocation as Adaptation to Climate Change in Fiji Islands’, in Migration, Risk Management and Climate Change: Evidence and Policy Responses, ed. Andrea Milan, Benjamin Schraven, Koko Warner and Noemi Cascone (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2016), 149–73. 3. Marie Battiste, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage (Canada: Saskatoon, Purich Publishing, 2000), 9. 4. Fikret Berkes, ‘Indigenous Ways of Knowing and the Study of Environmental Change’, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 39, no. 4 (2009): 151; Karen E. McNamara and Helene Jacot Des Combes, ‘Planning for Community Relocations Due to Climate Change in Fiji’, International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 6, no. 3 (2015): 315–19. 5. D. Schlosberg and L. B. Collins, ‘From Environmental to Climate Justice: Climate Change and the Discourse of Environmental Justice’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 5, no. 3 (2014): 359–74. 6. Fikret Berkes, Johan Colding and Carl Folke, ‘Rediscovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge as Adaptive Management’, Ecological Applications 10, no. 5 (2000): 1251–62. 7. Verena Keck and Dominik Schieder, ‘Contradictions and Complexities – Current Perspectives on Pacific Islander Mobilities’, Anthropological Forum 25, no. 2: 115–30; Epeli Hau’Ofa, ‘Our Sea of Islands’, The Contemporary Pacific (Spring, 1994): 148–61. 8. Albert L. Refiti, ‘Recontextualising Polynesian Architecture in Aotearoa New Zealand’, in The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture, ed. Elizabeth Grant, Kelly Greenop, Albert L. Refiti and Daniel J. Glenn (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 127–40. 9. Julian Agyeman, Patrick Devine-Wright and Julia Prange, ‘Close to the Edge, Down by the River? Joining Up Managed Retreat and Place Attachment in a Climate changed World’, Environment and Planning A 41, no. 3 (2009): 509–13. 10. Paul Oliver, Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), vii. 11. James Miller, ‘Indigenous Design Knowledge and Placemaking in the Climate Diaspora’. Paper presented at the ARCC 2019 International Conference, Ryerson University, Toronto, 29 May–1 June 2019. 12. Jennifer McKinnon, Julie Mushynsky and Genevieve Cabrera, ‘A Fluid Sea in the Mariana Islands: Community Archaeology and Mapping the Seascape of Saipan’, Journal of Maritime Archaeology 9, no. 1 (2014): 59–79. 13. Suliana Siwatibau, ‘Traditional Environmental Practices in the South Pacific: A Case Study of Fiji’, Ambio 13, no. 5/6 (1984): 365–8. 14. Sitiveni Ratuva, ‘Na kilaka a vaka-Viti ni veikabula: Indigenous Knowledge and the Fijian Cosmos: Implications on Bio-prospecting’, Pacific Genes & Life Patents: Pacific Indigenous Experience & Analysis of Commodification & Ownership of Life (Wellington, NZ: Call of the Earth Llamado de la Tierra and The United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, 2007), 90–101. 15. Nick Estes, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (London; New York: Verso, 2019). 16. Ian McNiven, ‘Saltwater People: Spiritscapes, Maritime Rituals and the Archaeology of Australian Indigenous Seascapes’, World Archaeology 35, no. 3 (2004): 329–49. 17. Carol Farbotko, Celia McMichael, Olivia Dun, Hedda Ransan‐Cooper, Karen E. McNamara, and Fanny Thornton, ‘Transformative Mobilities in the Pacific: Promoting Adaptation and Development in a Changing Climate’, Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies 5, no. 3 (2018): 393–407. 18. Berkes et al., ‘Rediscovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge as Adaptive Management’; Kyle Powys Whyte, ‘Justice Forward: Tribes, Climate Adaptation and Responsibility’, Climatic Change 120, no. 3 (2013): 517; Joeli Veitayaki, ‘Traditional Marine Resource Management Practices used in the Pacific Islands: An Agenda for Change’, Ocean & Coastal Management 37, no. 1 (1997): 123–36; C. F. Koya Vaka’uta, ‘Rethinking Research

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as Relational Space in the Pacific: Pedagogy & Praxis’, in Relational Hermeneutics: Decolonisation and the Pacific, ed. Upolu Lumā Vaai and Aisake Casimira (Suva, Fiji: Pacific Theological College, University of the South Pacific, 2017), 65–84. 19. Siwatibau, ‘Traditional Environmental Practices in the South Pacific’. 20. Rosiana Kushila Lagi, ‘Na Bu: An explanatory study of Indigenous knowledge of Climate Change Education in Ovalau, Fiji’. (PhD diss., The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji, 2015). 21. Albert Refiti, ‘Mavae and Tofiga: Spatial Exposition of the Samoan Cosmogony and Architecture’, PhD diss., Auckland University of Technology, 2015, 25. 22. Lagi, ‘Na Bu’. 23. Ibid. 24. John R. Campbell, ‘Climate-change Migration in the Pacific’, The Contemporary Pacific 26, no. 1 (2014): 1–28. 25. Susanne Becken, ‘Harmonising Climate change Adaptation and Mitigation: The Case of Tourist Resorts in Fiji’, Global Environmental Change 15, no. 4 (2005): 381. 26. World Meteorological Organization. Report of the Sixteenth Session of the WMO RA V Tropical Cyclone Committee for the South Pacific and South-East Indian Ocean. Honiara, Solomon Islands, 29 August – 2 September 2016, 13. 27. Jon Barnett, ‘Adapting to Climate Change in Pacific Island Countries: The Problem of Uncertainty’, World Development 29, no. 6 (2001): 978. 28. Unaisi Nabobo-Baba, ‘Decolonising Framings in Pacific Research: Indigenous Fijian Vanua Research Framework as an Organic Response’, AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 4, no. 2 (2008): 140–54. 29. John Overton, ‘Farms, Suburbs, or Retirement Homes? The Transformation of Village Fiji’, The Contemporary Pacific 5, no. 1 (1993): 45. 30. Spike Boydell and Krishn Shah, ‘An Inquiry into the Nature of Land Ownership in Fiji’, Paper presented at The International Association for the Study of Common Property, Brisbane, Australia, 7–9 September 2003, 5. 31. Eleni Vula, Rahika Mani and Asesela Serau, Social Impacts of Equal Land Lease Distribution. Report, University of Fiji, 2018, 3. 32. Farbotko et al., ‘Transformative Mobilities in the Pacific’. 33. Neil W. Adger, Jon Barnett, Katrina Brown, Nadine Marshall and Karen O’brien, ‘Cultural Dimensions of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation’, Nature Climate Change 3, no. 2 (2013): 116. 34. Farbotko et al., ‘Transformative Mobilities in the Pacific’; McNamara and Des Combes, ‘Planning for Community Relocations Due to Climate Change in Fiji’. 35. Farbotko et al., ‘Transformative Mobilities in the Pacific’. 36. Republic of Fiji, Fiji’s Relocation Guideline. Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Suva and Republic of Fiji, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. 2015. 37. Richard Black, W. Neil Adger, Nigel W. Arnell, Stefan Dercon, Andrew Geddes and David Thomas, ‘The Effect of Environmental Change on Human Migration’, Global Environmental Change 21 (2011): S3–S11; Campbell, Climate-change Migration in the Pacific. 38. Republic of Fiji, Fiji’s Relocation Guideline: 23. 39. John Connell, ‘Population, Migration, and Problems of Atoll Development in the South Pacific’, Pacific Studies 9, no. 2 (1986): 41. 40. Campbell, Climate-change Migration in the Pacific, 17. 41. Godfrey Baldacchino and Ilan Kelman, ‘Critiquing the Pursuit of Island Sustainability: Blue and Green, with Hardly a Colour in between’, Shima 8, no. 4 (2014): 4. 42. Campbell, Climate-change Migration in the Pacific, 22.

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43. Epeli Hau’Ofa, ‘Our Sea of Islands’. 44. Stats NZ, ‘2013 Census Quickstats’. http://archive.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-­summaryreports/quickstats-about-national-highlights/cultural-diversity.aspx 45. M. Talanoa Lātū, A Contribution to the Teaching and Learning of Tongan Primary School Children in New Zealand (Master’s Thesis: Auckland University of Technology, 2009). 46. Harriet Farquhar, ‘Migration with Dignity: Towards a New Zealand Response to Climate Change Displacement in the Pacific’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 46 (2015): 40. 47. Ruth Faleolo, ‘Pasifika Diaspora Connectivity and Continuity with Pacific Homelands: Material Culture and Spatial Behaviour in Brisbane’, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 31, no. 1 (2020): 66–84. 48. AFP, ‘New Zealand Cools on Climate Refugee Plan’, News24, 2018, accessed 29 December 2018, https:// www.news24.com/Green/News/new-zealand-cools-on-climate-refugee-plan-20180316. 49. James D. Ford, Laura Cameron, Jennifer Rubis, Michelle Maillet, Douglas Nakashima, Ashlee Cunsolo Willox and Tristan Pearce, ‘Including Indigenous Knowledge and Experience in IPCC Assessment Reports’, Nature Climate Change 6, no. 4 (2016): 349–53. 50. Scott Leckie, ‘Climate-related Disasters and Displacement: Homes for Lost Homes, Lands for Lost Lands’, in Population Dynamics and Climate Change, ed. José Miguel Guzmán, José Miguel, George Martine, Gordon McGranahan, Daniel Schensul and Cecilia Tacoli (UNFPA and IIED, 2009: 119. 51. Farbotko et al., Transformative Mobilities in the Pacific, 8. 52. James C. Scott, Seeing like a state: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 53. Lisa Peattie, Planning: Rethinking Ciudad Guayana (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987), 111–52. 54. Mike Austin, ‘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, 2000, 121–6. 55. Refiti, ‘Mavae and Tofiga’. 56. Paul Memmott, ‘The Re-invention of the “Behaviour setting” in the new Indigenous Architecture’, in The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 831. 57. Miller, ‘Indigenous Design Knowledge and Placemaking in the Climate Diaspora’. 58. Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (London: Penguin UK, 2018). 59. Clara Irazábal, ‘Ethnoscapes’, Companion to Urban Design, ed. Tridib Banerjee, and Anastasia LoukaitouSideris (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), 562–73; Arjun Appadurai, ‘Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology’, Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, ed. Richard G. Fox (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1991), 191–210. 60. Half of the students in the studio focused on project sites in Ovalau Fiji, and half in greater Wellington, New Zealand. Both addressed design in relation to vernacular landscapes, and were asked to consider each space as a hybrid geography. Students and faculty conducted fieldwork in both sites. While Ovalau is a former colonial capital city now occupied by primarily Indigenous Fijians with an Asian minority, the research focused on New Zealand differed in that Fijians are arriving in an already-occupied (and already contested) landscape. This paper focuses on the New Zealand projects; for more on the Fijian proposals see: Allan, Penny, Elizabeth Yarina and Martin Bryant, ‘Landscape as Middle Ground: A Resilience Approach to Conservation and Promotion of UNESCO World Heritage Site, Levuka, Fiji.’ Historic Environment (2020). 61. Irazabal, ‘Ethnoscapes’, 567. 62. Borie, Maud, Gina Ziervogel, Faith E. Taylor, James DA Millington, Rike Sitas and Mark Pelling, ‘Mapping (for) Resilience across City Scales: An Opportunity to Open-up Conversations for More Inclusive Resilience Policy?’ Environmental Science & Policy 99 (2019): 1–9.

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63 Claudia Bode and Lizzie Yarina, ‘Thick Representations for Oceanic Space’, in Urbanisation of the Sea, ed. Nancy Couling and Carola Hein (Rotterdam: NAi010, 2020), 71–92. 64 Javier X. Leon, James Hardcastle, Robyn James, Simon Albert, Jimmy Kereseka and Colin D. Woodroffe, ‘Supporting Local and Traditional Knowledge with Science for Adaptation to Climate Change: Lessons Learned from Participatory Three-Dimensional Modeling in BoeBoe, Solomon Islands’, Coastal Management 43, no. 4 (2015): 424–38. 65 Memmott, ‘The Re-invention of the “Behaviour Setting” in the New Indigenous Architecture’. 66 Gharbaoui and Blocher, ‘The Reason Land Matters: Relocation as Adaptation to Climate Change in Fiji Islands’. 67 Agyeman, Devine-Wright and Prange, ‘Close to the Edge, Down by the River? Joining Up Managed Retreat and Place Attachment in a Climate Changed World’. 68 Mazereeuw, Miho, Aditya Barve and Lizzie Yarina, ‘PrepHub Nepal: Disaster Preparedness and Water Security in the Public Realm’, Journal of Architectural Education 74, no. 1 (2020): 101–9. 69 Borie et al., ‘Mapping (for) Resilience across City Scales: An Opportunity to Open-up Conversations for More Inclusive Resilience Policy?’. 70 Miller, ‘Indigenous Design Knowledge and Placemaking in the Climate Diaspora’. 71 Memmott, ‘The Re-invention of the “Behaviour Setting” in the New Indigenous Architecture’. 72 Irazabal, ‘Ethnoscapes’. 73 Ghosh, The Great Derangement. 74 Refiti, ‘Mavae and Tofiga’; Vaka’uta, ‘Rethinking Research as Relational Space in the Pacific’. 75 Austin, ‘Polynesian Influences in New Zealand Architecture’.

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Part 4  The vernacular in postcolonial modernization, politicization and n­ ation-building

14  Historic church vernacular in the Cook Islands: Modernization, conservation and change

  CAROLYN HILL

Introduction The Cook Islands is a Pacific Island nation consisting of fifteen islands and atolls spread over 2 million square kilometres in the South Pacific Ocean. Following the arrival of the London Missionary Society in 1823, the island group was formalized as a British Protectorate in 1888 and then as part of the Colony of New Zealand from 1901. It became a self-governing territory in free association with New Zealand in 1965. Over 70 per cent of the resident population live in Rarotonga, although a greater number of Cook Islanders now live overseas.1 This study focuses on Rarotonga’s five historic churches, which were originally constructed under the London Missionary Society (LMS) in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Located in the different districts of the island, they form a powerful basis of society and Cook Island identity as the ‘new marae’ (dedicated places of religious ceremony). Each churchscape – church and associated hall, pastoral residence and graveyard – was constructed with massive walls of coral stone, a process that was largely initiated and  directed by tribal groups themselves. Interviews with twenty local people were conducted in 2014 as part of field research on Rarotonga, and the church of Matavera was used as a case study for detailed analysis.2 Interview conversations indicated that these historic churches, now under the Cook Islands Christian Church (CICC),3 are considered an Indigenous architecture – an enduring statement of ancestors’ efforts and achievement. Simultaneously, physical and historical investigation of the Matavera churchscape revealed significant changes over generations; to the site and ancillary buildings, and to the church building itself in form, materials and detailing. Matavera’s modifications are reasonably consistent with changes to the other churchscapes across the group. The churches’ historical context has profound implications for the ways in which these modifications are perceived. Each generation has altered church places not only for pragmatic reasons of maintenance and repair, but for reasons of aspirational modernization – selectively adopting and adapting foreign forms and materials as mana (prestige, authority) is expressed in new ways. Issues of modernization agendas overlaying conservation concerns indicate that the relationships between Church, traditional hierarchies and the state are complex, overlapping and continually recontestable. Historic churchscapes emerge as spaces that are intricately tied to collective and national identity, and therefore hold cultural value to people of the Cook Islands regardless of personal membership or use. Enabling increasingly heterogenous communities to maintain ancestral connections to the land may be critical for the long-term sustainment of this Indigenous vernacular in an era of radical environmental change and rapidly shifting economic realities.

Rarotonga’s historical context Rarotonga is an island of volcanic origin, characterized by deep valleys descending from central mountains that culminate in a coastal plain, beyond which is a shallow lagoon enclosed by a fringing reef. This concentric geography shaped Rarotonga’s traditional land tenure system, with each tribal group historically controlling a wedge of land (tapere) from the mountains to the reef.4 Prior to the arrival of Christianity in 1823, the governance structure of tapere was centred on an ariki or mata’iapo, who together formed the aronga mana, or collective tribal leadership, of the island. The mana of these chiefly titles varied; mata’iapo were independent landholders who gained their position by kinship to an ariki or by success in war. Ariki, while never actually paramount, had more mana than mata’iapo. They governed inter-tapere alliances that encompassed multiple tapere and formed broader geo-political districts known as vaka.5 At the turn of the nineteenth century the island was divided into three vaka. East and south was Takitumu, which was headed by two ariki; Pa in the north (Ngatangiia and Matavera) and Kainuku in the south (Avana). Western Rarotonga was Puaikura (Arorangi), headed by ariki Tinomana. The northern district was Te-Au-oTonga (Avarua), headed by ariki Makea.6 However, geo-political relations between the three vaka were volatile at the time and were inflamed by the chance arrival of an Australian merchant ship, the Cumberland, in 1814, and the subsequent kidnapping of an ariki’s daughter, Tapaeru, by its sailors. This event catalysed inter-vaka warfare on Rarotonga, which ended with Takitumu victorious over Avarua and Arorangi.7 It was into a state of uneasy post-war peace that the LMS arrived in 1823.

Christianity’s arrival and consolidation LMS missionaries had met Tapaeru on the island of Aitutaki in 1821, where she had been left by the Cumberland’s crew seven years earlier. Their leader, Reverend John Williams, was immediately eager to extend Christianity’s reach to Rarotonga, which had been unknown to them. When the group set out in search of the island Tapaeru accompanied them, along with the Tahitian missionary Papehia.8 The LMS’s previous experiences in Tahiti had demonstrated that using Polynesian converts as missionary pioneers to other island communities had greater likelihood of success than sending Europeans, and this was to prove itself in Rarotonga. It was Tapaeru who mediated with her people for the safety of the missionaries, and Papehia who stayed on to settle and preach the gospel.9 The people of Rarotonga knew of the European god from the Cumberland’s sailors and the recently defeated tribes of Arorangi and Avarua were quickly open to changing allegiance to the new European god. Having just lost in battle, they had less to lose and potentially much to gain from a god that appeared more powerful and prosperous. By the time the island’s first permanent European missionary, Reverend Charles Pitman, arrived in May 1827, a large chapel had been built and a Christian village established in Avarua under Papehia’s instruction.10 The LMS mission’s initial intention of establishing a single multi-tribal Christian settlement in one location (Avarua) under the patronage of ariki Makea was short-lived. The other ariki (particularly Pa and Kainuku, who had recently defeated Makea) resented Makea’s perceived authority over them.11 A hurricane in 1826 that badly damaged the Avarua church was the catalyst for the people of Takitumu to construct their own church and school at Ngatangiia, and a third station was also established in Arorangi.12

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By the end of the 1820s, Rarotonga was once again structured along the geo-political lines of the three vaka. However, patterns of settlement and power balance had changed. Dispersed inland habitations structured around marae were replaced by coastal villages centered on churches, and political power was increasingly concentrated in a small number of ariki rather than spread across ariki and mata’iapo in bonds of reciprocity.13

Reaffirmation of mana These changes were rejected by many mata’iapo in the Takitumu vaka, who would not forget their recent victory in war and scorned ariki Pa and Kainuku for failing to stand against the mission. Inland Takitumu in the areas of Titikaveka and Matavera became centres of anti-Christian activity. Their leaders led uprisings to overthrow Christianity, notably in 1829, when the Ngatangiia church was destroyed by arson. However, a dysentery epidemic in 1830 followed by a hurricane and famine caused many conversions and, coupled with power increasingly concentrated in the Christianized ariki, compelled mata’iapo opposers to cease their open hostility.14 Ariki Kainuku was formally admitted into the Church in 1834. However, he refused to leave his traditional lands in southern Takitumu. With the support of various mata’iapo he received LMS permission to establish a fourth Christian settlement in Titikaveka.15 The resultant church building, completed in 1841, was Rarotonga’s first in stone. This was an important shift away from the architectural materiality of earlier church buildings in Avarua, Arorangi and Ngatangiia, which had been constructed in timber. As recorded by Ta’unga, a Rarotongan convert and one of its first Indigenous missionaries, stone was deliberately chosen to reassert Titikaveka’s mana – which had been diminished by their reluctance to embrace the new religion.16 The Cook Islands artist Eruera Te Whiti Nia explains the symbolism of the move to stone: Linked to the land, stone is made sacred by purpose, naming and arrangement. … It is with stone that the Māori confirms his title, and genealogies attachment to a place, a marae and the land.17

The construction of a stone church not only restored mana through arduous technical accomplishment.18 By using stone the Titikaveka people were re-stating their ancestral right to the land through the construction of an immutable built form dedicated to the new god. This had been previously accomplished through the construction of marae, each stone of which had sacred and political meaning.19 The Titikaveka church was physical confirmation of the Church as the new marae, its Indigenization and precedence in a re-ordered political system.

The case of Matavera The understanding of church buildings as Indigenous architecture is encapsulated in the establishment of the Matavera church. Titikaveka’s founding encouraged the mata’iapo of Matavera to petition for a fifth station in their tribal land in northern Takitumu. This was not supported by ariki Pa, whose power had been concentrated in the Ngatangiia station; nor by the resident British missionary Pitman, who wanted to avoid further fragmentation of the ekalesia (Christian community). However, conflicts between Pa’s Ngatangiia people and mata’iapo-led Matavera groups led to agreement for a separate station in 1849.20 LMS records from the period indicate that the ekalesia of Matavera led the design and construction of the subsequent church building on their land, with little intervention by outside parties. This was partly circumstantial – European missionaries were very few in number, isolated and lacking in resources, and access to foreign tools and materials was minimal.21 But it also indicates the Indigenization of Christianity

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and its physical expression, as Matavera people first demonstrated their tribal mana and independence by opposing the gospel, then, upon conversion, demanding a church on their own tapere. Tribal lines were once again inscribed on the land; no longer symbolized by marae, but by Christian churches.22 In Matavera, the building was constructed as a rectangular, gable-roofed building, formatively defined by a series of monumentally buttressed tiers built in coral rubble stone bonded with coral lime mortar. As with the marae before, it was not simply a built edifice but a braiding together of natural features and built form, ritual, stories and relationships in a multi-dimensional cultural landscape. Its siting made deliberate cosmological references to the mountains and sea that form Matavera’s ancestral boundaries. Stone edgings to the churchyard’s borders created a demarcation of sacred space, and entrances, pathways and grave sites reflected the traditional hierarchies of former marae customs.23 The mass of the building – with walls 3 metres thick at base – served both physical and symbolic purpose: both as a hurricane-resistant stronghold24 and as a visual representation of the independence and mana of its mata’iapo (Figure 14.1). The Matavera church exemplifies the ways in which meaning and ritual from pre-Christian religious practice were deeply woven into the island’s LMS churches in both their architecture and grounds. Churches were not alien religious constructs spliced into Indigenous ontology, but were a transformed expression of an (already) Indigenous cultural landscape, the enclosing of mana in a new form.

Fig. 14.1  The Matavera church, 1904. George R. Crummer, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Collection, B.027768.

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Changes over time This background provides the context for the ways in which church vernacular has been recontested, recontextualized and renewed through continued place use. The living reality of Rarotonga’s CICC churchscapes means that, rather than being static constructs from a particular time and context, built forms have been subject to continual reiteration and community improvisation as perceived needs have shifted through the generations (Figure 14.2). A pragmatic approach to modifications, typified by minimal documentation, expedient construction techniques, easily-available building materials and ease of maintenance, is evident in all the island’s historic church vernacular. Their massive coral stone walls survive, but repairs are undertaken using readily accessible Portland cement rather than labour-intensive, now difficult to source, lime. Reinforced concrete ring beams have been installed at the top of walls as the footing for modern roof structures. Traditions of pre-European detailing in structures and surfaces have been replaced by prefabricated framing and imported linings. Extensions have been added and ancillary buildings such as Sunday school halls and ‘orometua (pastoral) residences have been radically altered or demolished and replaced. Churchyards have had boundary walls and pathways changed, graves covered by lawn and trees felled.25 This raises several important issues: Are these changes indicative of a progressive homogenization of churchscapes to a ‘global vernacular’? Is there a need to reclaim Indigenous histories through architectural form? Does postcolonial modernization eclipse established heritage traditions outlived in church places?

Fig. 14.2  The Matavera churchscape has altered considerably over time, with the building form lowered, graveyard partly grassed over and vegetation cleared. Photo Carolyn Hill, 2014.

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Questions of heritage significance underscore the reality of CICC churchscapes as living vernacular; they are centres for worship and fellowship for their members, and part of life’s backdrop for non-members. On a day-to-day basis, their architecture is generally uncontemplated. As has been recorded in similar circumstances elsewhere internationally,26 aspirations to modify and modernize not only are inevitable in this context, but emanate from locals themselves.

Perceptions of change Field research suggests that while local people have variously been involved in or are aware of CICC churchscape modifications, they are often not considered substantial to the church as a place; the place ‘feels the same’.27 An interpretation of this perception is that places may be considered unchanged when they continue to embody the same, or incrementally evolved, functions and sense of community regardless of (sometimes substantial) tectonic change. When vernacular architecture is part of people’s day-to-day life experience, its significance is less in its material authenticity than in its role in maintaining the idea of a place; its rituals and rhythms that sustain social practices and senses of identity.28 However, perceptions of the ‘unchanging’ nature of churchscapes in the Rarotongan context may extend beyond individual person-place connections to intrinsic concepts of time and ancestry in the Polynesian world. As explained by architectural theorist Albert Refiti, This conception places time in the service of the ancestors. Together, we and they mark and make time, making it evolve as duration. It opens and contracts relative to our engagement.29

This suggests that Cook Islanders’ emotional bonds with CICC churchscapes are not simply reliant on personal participation or material continuity but are predicated on deeper, pre-Christian understandings of tribal relationships, hierarchy, genealogy and land, with mana as their foundation. The original inception of  Christian settlements was tied to the land, with each ariki or group of mata’iapo gifting land, and ‘iti tangata (common people) constructing buildings at their request. In this way, traditional leaders claimed the Church as their tama ʻūʻā, a Mangaian phrase meaning to raise a child on the lap, protecting it, providing for it and allowing it to flourish.30 The cultural heritage of churchscapes is bound with their specific historical narratives – a past that is not faded or lost but lives in a continuous ancestral present. This non-linear view of time blurs distinctions between permanent and transitory fabric, tangible and intangible heritage, vernacular and monumental forms. Churches physically represent the living faith-action of ancestors, symbolically re-stating ancestral rights to the land. This significance is one that endures beyond material change.

Collective identity and nation-building The cultural relevance of the CICC, in terms of both an organization and its physical church places, is therefore not necessarily limited to its ekalesia but variously extends to Cook Islanders more broadly. A common view among people interviewed on Rarotonga in 2014 was that the Church had commingled with, and appropriated, previous marae-based forms of communal identity. Not only was the Church considered part of Cook Islanders’ cultural identity regardless of what faith individuals adhered to, but it was also regarded as critical to the formation of the Cook Islands as an entity, drawing formerly disparate people groups together as a nation.31 The Church’s role in nation-building extended beyond the Church as institutional entity to the physical places themselves, with church buildings being seen as ‘living effigies’ or icons of the Cook Islands.32 As expressed by one non-member interviewee:

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Well, I think it does [have significance], because [the CICC churches are] a physical embodiment of our religious belief. It’s just like our marae was the place of spiritual congregation prior to the churches, so it just shows how we have, I don’t know whether the word is evolved, maybe devolved [laughter], but it shows that change. And that change is still well and alive today, so in that respect I think it is very important. … I think they do [have a role in identity formation] – say for example … when I saw [a] painting [of a CICC church], I connected to it in a cultural way, I didn’t sort of think … oh that’s a European-style architecturally styled church, you think of it as being part of our culture, and our identity.33

The buildings conservation academic Zeynep Aygen argues that there is a strong link between heritage preservation and politics, where decisions regarding what to preserve or demolish, what to privilege or neglect are shaped by the conscious construction of tradition as part of national identity creation.34 While this has involved the rejection of colonial heritage in some post-colonial states,35 the Indigenization of Cook Islands’ Christian expression has meant that successive post-independence governments have promoted the dual importance of the nation’s Christian and pre-Christian heritages in nation-building. Aligning with trends throughout the Pacific in the postcolonial era,36 marae- and church-based places and practices have both been used to construct, commodify and traditionalize a collective identity across the island group. This may imply that the formerly competing social fields of marae and Church are now jointly subordinate to a more complex agenda of nation-state.37 However, socio-political realities in Rarotonga suggest a more complex relationship between the entities of state, Church and aronga mana than one of dominance/ subordination. This plays out in the ongoing use and adaptation of church vernacular, as evidenced in the overlaps of leadership and in circumscribed parameters for use and purpose. These two themes are explored below. First, while there is increased complementarity between the social fields of Church and aronga mana under the now principal authority of the state, there is significant leadership overlap between all three social fields. Most traditional leaders are still CICC members, many mata’iapo are also Church deacons, and the Church retains a high percentage of the island’s political leaders.38 Interviewees suggested that this was due to continued perceptions of the CICC being the Cook Islands Church, the first Church, the Church that for interwoven reasons of initial impact, land gifting, myth reinforced through nation-building and continued traditional practice, is not only Indigenized but Indigenous.39 The ingrained understanding that pre-Christian marae were physically and culturally transposed into the Church results in church places being seen as tangible links between tribes, tribal leaders and their land.40 The overlap of leaders between Church, aronga mana and state is therefore perhaps not surprising, and indicates complex negotiations between these social fields as much as subordination. Second, while the Church and church places continue to be instrumental in cultural (both Church and non-Church) practices and remain key centres for local activity, their appropriation for tourism agendas is limited. As with other parts of Polynesia,41 the Cook Islands has sought to commodify aspects of pre-Christian and mission/colonial period traditions through the marketing of cultural experiences as part of its tourism offering.42 The Church has played a key role in reconfiguring cultural expression in the Cook Islands, as members increasingly shift focus from ‘uniformed organizations’ (LMS-instigated Boys and Girls Brigades and the like) to traditional performing arts of music and dance. Ekalesia act as organizational hubs and supply many of the leaders and participants for cultural competitions and festivals. Resultant expressions of pre-Christian culture such as the national dance competition, Te Maeva Nui, are seen as beneficial for shaping national pride and identity. It is not unrelated that music and dance are also easily commodified for the Cook Islands’ tourist market, marrying well with the nation’s marketing as a destination for sun and sand, the Pacific paradise myth.

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However, forays into establishing a tourism-focused framework for the promotion of tangible cultural heritage such as marae, church buildings, etc., have been less successful, generally foundering in the face of landowners’ ambivalence. Individual CICC congregations are welcoming of tourists, but they have generally been reluctant to embrace opportunities for greater engagement and responsiveness to tourism agendas, in terms of buildings’ use and management.43 This is also reflected in local attitudes and actions relating to pre-Christian marae, where outsiders’ welcome is generally limited to particular sites re-orientated to tourism, or invited ceremonial events following specific protocol.44 This discussion does not deny the commodification of traditional fields occurring in the Cook Islands; rather, it indicates the complex relationships between Church, traditional hierarchies and the state. None of these entities monopolize processes of change in cultural norms and physical places; rather, interwoven patterns of co-dependency mean that modernization and nation-building agendas are grounded in negotiated relationships of reciprocity and overlapping interests.

Conservation directions How to consider the conservation of church vernacular in this context? The extent of physical modifications made to churchscapes challenge Western conservation principles that give highest priority to authenticity and integrity of original fabric. The seemingly permanent elements of these historic places, their tangible stone and mortar, timber, fibres and metal, have in fact been intensively subject to transformative physical change. Furthermore, questions of genuine local empowerment, consultation, etc., are beside the point in a context where local people themselves are the directors and recipients of all change actions. However, research findings indicate that physical modifications made to church places by their congregations can be contentious in the wider community. A notable example is a major modification to the Matavera church in c.1944, when the entire building’s outer walls were lowered by several metres. An interviewee who was a child at the time recalled that the decision, seemingly made due to maintenance challenges and recent hurricane damage, was opposed by the tapere mata’iapo and Pa Ariki. These traditional leaders invoked the tama ʻūʻā relationship between aronga mana and the Church and argued that the ekalesia was remiss not to repair the walls. However, this father-child reference was rejected by the Church leadership as a defunct hierarchy. They claimed the right, as the utilizers of the church, to alter it, and the work went ahead.45 Similar objections and rejections occurred elsewhere in 2003, when graves were destroyed as part of a ‘beautification programme’ at the Avarua CICC,46 and when the original sennit-lashed timber roof of the Oneroa Sunday school building in Mangaia was demolished.47 Major site and building alterations continue to occur on church properties, with or without the support of connected communities (Figure 14.3). Such controversies embody the evolved acceptance of churchscapes as the new marae and the consequent inviolability of its physical fabric. It is notable that traditional leaders have often been at the forefront of opposition to modifications of church vernacular, invoking their tama ʻūʻā relationship and reemphasizing the relational complexities at play. Their related desire to direct decision-making confirms the Indigeneity of churchscapes; tangible manifestations of the work of ancestors and an integrated part of cultural heritage and identity. Simultaneously, these debates are symptomatic of how pragmatic agendas of simplification and expediency take precedence over both the traditional authority of aronga mana and heritage conservation concerns. The Church therefore emerges as first and foremost a place of use and action, with physical fabric being subservient to, rather than directive of, its performative requirements. Consensus on the need for, and approaches to, physical fabric conservation is not straightforward in this context. Government legislation is not seen as a workable approach for addressing issues of conservation, with most interviewees unsupportive of any statutory role in cultural heritage management of church

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Fig. 14.3  A row of historic toa (ironwood) trees were removed from the Avarua Church graveyard in 2021, amid protest action. Carolyn Hill, 2022.

places.48 A reluctance to engage with what is considered ‘New Zealand-style’ heritage regulation may relate in part to the Cook Islands’ experience of colonialism, reaction to which has led to strong prioritization of self-determination and owners’ land rights.49 While a statutory framework for protection of heritage places does exist in the Cook Islands in the form of the Cultural and Historic Places Act 1994–95 (1995), at the time of writing no site had been formally classified and protected as it theoretically enables, and the Cultural and Historic Places Trust, legally empowered by the Act to ‘identity, investigate, classify, protect, and preserve’ historic places (clause 5), has petered out several times.50 An interview with MCD staff suggested that there are issues with the language of the Act in terms of protection mechanisms and the role of the Trust: The protection [defined in the Act] is where you go in, and you basically take over the place. That doesn’t work here. … The Trust is not there to protect; the Trust is there to recognize the protection of those that are protecting it.51

This position reflects methods of cultural heritage conservation across the Pacific region which, as explored by the archaeologist Anita Smith, … (take place) primarily at the local level through traditional resource management practices within the framework of traditional systems of land tenure systems and decision making. In many cases – and

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especially in relation to traditional and archaeological sites – this provides very effective and sustainable management of heritage values.52

Changing circumstances and new pressures may, however, challenge these existing management systems in the contemporary context of Rarotonga. Perceptions of the Act’s current wording as unworkable on one hand, and the frustrations of local people powerless to dissuade unsupported modifications on the other, highlight tensions regarding the stewardship of churchscapes and whose voices and values may be heard. This issue of representation is relatively recent. Prior to the 1970s, CICC membership included the vast majority of Rarotonga’s population, enabling the community as a whole to speak into church works through the ekalesia. However, the realities of increasingly varied personal faith choices, population mobility and international connectivity have caused membership of the CICC to dwindle in the last decades, with the denomination now representing less than half of Rarotongan residents.53 As Rarotonga society becomes increasingly diverse and more Cook Islanders live internationally, congregations are less representative of the disparate communities who may see church vernacular as part of their ancestral identity. Interviewees provided insight into the complex relationships between aspirational modernization and heritage conservation in an increasingly heterogenous society. Most interviewees (regardless of membership) considered that individual ekalesia should continue to be the full decision-makers regarding church properties due to their ownership and funding role.54 However, a few voiced reservations regarding the democracy and outcomes of the process, and several suggested that the CICC Executive Council (an elected body that oversees Church management) could provide high-level guidance for preservation and restoration standards and techniques, and could facilitate processes to consider a range of people’s views, potentially including non-members.55 Others emphasized the importance of the tama ʻūʻā relationship between aronga mana and the Church, suggesting that traditional leaders had a responsibility to speak out against modifications that could weaken cultural links to ancestors. However, it was also acknowledged that increasing fragmentation and contention of land tenure in Rarotonga can cause disputes regarding ariki and mata’iapo titles and their right to speak for particular tapere or vaka.56 Most non-member interviewees in Rarotonga were hesitant to claim a right to have input on matters of conservation of CICC places. A few voiced that the historic churches were also their heritage and that therefore custodianship should perhaps extend beyond ekalesia members. Others suggested that church places should be conserved, but were less clear about who should be involved in stewardship processes.57 A New Zealand-based member of the CICC shared a striking view as one of the Cook Islands diaspora: I do have a say, if I go back, I do have a say, I can voice myself … but from here I can’t. They will say, uh, who the hell are you? You don’t stay here! You stay over there – why you come? Then I will tell them, I am one of the members of that [Church], I have worked for that, I have been giving funds to do that, why you push me out? I have got the right – who are you? … I would be able to voice that … but you know, the older ones, they will agree to that [my right to speak]. But the new generation, they won’t, you know – they don’t look at the past, what’s been happening before.58

This view raises two important points. First, a significant proportion of financial provision for the Church is coming from Cook Islanders overseas. CICC churches were built on pre-contact understandings of reciprocity, and ongoing processes of modernization and new building works are enabled by remittances from expatriate populations, artificially bolstering contributions made by diminishing local congregations.59 Second, there is a perceived generational divergence of views on the prerogative of expatriate Cook Islanders to have a say on local matters. Closer ties of blood and birth mean that older

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people living abroad and in the Cook Islands generally claim and affirm these rights and responsibilities through a shared sense of belonging. However, a growing number of Cook Islanders are born and raised in other cultural contexts. These generations may increasingly question these relationships as the individualism-collectivism paradigm is reweighed.60 This is reflected in the following perspectives from New Zealand-based Cook Islanders regarding remittances for church projects, the first not associated with the CICC, the second a member: [There is] a small amount of people influencing a lot of people for something which isn’t going to benefit very many people … because of the status of those institutions, even though they don’t represent as many of the people as they did used to, they still have that influence. And I don’t think it’s just, I don’t think it’s a sensible or most effective use of people’s limited resources.61 My kids don’t go to church … but they do things for the Church. … They always give their donations on Sundays for the Church. And if we have things for the Church, running fund-raisers and all that … they do them. … They remember their grandma. That’s why they do this.62

Some 85 per cent of Cook Islanders now live permanently overseas.63 The ways in which they variously choose (or are able) to interact with their ancestral Cook Islands communities in terms of ongoing remittances and decision-making have the potential to shape whether and how church vernacular is modernized or conserved. This is particularly relevant in the current context of climate change and Covid-19, as explored below.

A cultural landscapes approach While international conservation theory has sought to priorities local communities in heritage identification and management of historic vernacular,64 it remains easy in practice to revert to a built heritage focus, and to limit that focus to issues of historic significance and authenticity to the detriment of living social values. A fundamental assumption is that preservation of the material past is worthwhile. This grounding may be inconsistent with the role of architecture in Polynesian ontology. While Western perceptions tend to priorities architecture as a visual object in space, architecture’s purpose in the Pacific is primarily relational, drawing together people and place in non-linear time.65 This is evident in Rarotonga as disused structures slowly disintegrate back into the land while new buildings are constructed alongside. While ongoing use and incremental modernization projects make this currently unlikely for church vernacular, it is possible that a church building, dislocated from living heritage practices but still enwoven in a present ancestral past, could be allowed to ruinate. It is notable that the Cook Islands celebrates its culture most strongly through intangible heritage practices rather than built forms, including singing, dance, performance, costumery, vaka (canoe) racing and sport. As has been the case throughout human history, it is these identity markers that have been carried, reshaped and strengthened by those who migrate. They are now used in reciprocal cross-nation gatherings to bring spatially separated Cook Islanders together.66 However, this does not negate the significance of tangible heritage, particularly that outlived in historic vernacular, the day-to-day of memory. Historic places remain an important repository of intangible practice, facilitating actions that foster memory and identity. Peoples’ attachment to such places can go unrecognized until they are threatened in some way.67 Moreover, there is evidence internationally that people who are long separated, even by generations, from a cultural homeland can feel a strong need to reconnect with ancestors through physical place,68 which in the case of the Cook Islands may include church vernacular. This has the potential to affect responses to increasingly challenging environmental and economic changes faced by the Cook Islands, and may contest, recontextualize and renew local stewardship of

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church places. How might the management and conservation of historic church vernacular be shaped in a context of deterritorialization of tradition and reinterpretation of cultural practice and identity? These issues are exacerbated by the dual contemporary challenges of the global climate crisis and its effects of extreme weather events and sea-level rise,69 and the devastating financial effects of Covid-19 due to hugely diminished tourism as well as expatriate job losses internationally.70 International Cook Island communities who once could provide significant funding for church modification and development projects may no longer have the means to do so, while changing weather and temperature patterns may create new issues of material deterioration and destabilization. The Cook Islands culture remains reinventive in response to dynamic settings. The pressures of rapid change may mean new thinking for old places. Recognizing CICC church vernacular as enwoven cultural landscapes may be a useful framework for their sustainment long term. Cultural landscapes have important applicability in Polynesia, where natural and cultural features are inseparable and interwoven with stories and performances that enliven and give places meaning, and where mission arrival did not negate Indigeneity but became enmeshed in it. This approach has the potential to engender ownership and custodianship of cultural heritage in a Pacific milieu. Rarotonga’s historic church places are entanglements of physical form, social values and understandings of land; constructs in time as much as space. A cultural landscapes perspective may extend beyond considering each CICC site on its own terms, to a view that weaves church vernacular into broader webs of Indigenous landscapes, encompassing marae, burial grounds, natural landscapes and geographic features. Recognizing the historical and contemporary overlaps between these landscapes, and the social fields grounded in them, opens options for wider voices to be heard and greater cultural depth to be considered in decision-making. It may also enable opportunities for new crossovers between the dualities of ‘tradition’ and ‘Christian beliefs’ that form the basis of national identity. An example may be inclusion of church sites in cultural education programmes, adding another strand to the current focus on oratory and marae practices.71 This will acknowledge their interwoven nature, potentially engendering holistic views of cultural identities and acknowledging churchscapes as part of an Indigenous narrative. A cultural landscapes approach also highlights the presence of connected communities to church places, including expatriate communities as well as future generations identifying as Cook Islanders both in-country and outside of it. The need for local people to actively manage their own historic vernacular is crucial. But active awareness at the local level of the potential significance of these places to people that span internationally and into the future may also be critical to ever-transforming cultural identities in the Pacific.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the early history of CICC church vernacular in Rarotonga. It has found that this historical context has implications for how conservation of historic church places is considered in the dynamic realities of contemporary Rarotonga. Churchscapes have been subject to multiple changes over time, as each generation has responded pragmatically to evolving needs and aspirations. These changes have generally been perceived by local people as being secondary to broader purposes of sustaining church use, with their social, religious and cultural functions forming a key part of the Cook Islands’ national identity. This may change, however, in the face of the increasingly socially heterogenous and physically disparate connected communities on the one hand, and unprecedented environmental and economic challenges on the other. This chapter suggests that considering church vernacular as strands in a web of Indigenous cultural landscapes may be critical for their ongoing sustainment, as their stones continue to genealogy ancestral attachments to the land.

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Cook Islands Māori glossary Ariki A chiefly title, head of a tribe and district leader. aronga mana Persons of rank as a collective; hierarchical system of traditional leadership. Ekalesia  Official membership of the Church; a group of people comprising the Church organization. Mana Authority, power, prestige; can be supernatural. Marae A dedicated area of ground, delineated by stones, used in the pre-Christian era for religious purposes and now for title investiture ceremonies and other rituals. mata’iapo A chiefly title, head of a sub-tribe. tamaʻūʻā To raise a child on the lap, to take in and rear as one of the family. Tapere A sub-district, usually headed by a mata’iapo or ariki. Vaka Lit. canoe; the three geo-political tribal districts of Rarotonga.

Notes 1. Statistics Office. Cook Islands population census 2016. Census. Rarotonga, Cook Islands: Ministry of Finance and Economic Management, Government of the Cook Islands, 2016, 17–18; Statistics New Zealand. ‘2018 census data: Cook Islands Maori ethnic group.’ Updated on 3 September 2020, https://www.stats.govt.nz/ tools/2018-census-ethnic-group-summaries/cook-islands-maori. In the 2018 census, over 80,000 people identified in the Cook Islands ethnic group in New Zealand. 2. For further detail regarding the concept of ‘churchscape’ and the interviews that informed this work, see C. Hill, ‘The Cook Islands Christian Churches of Rarotonga: Living Conservation in Cultural Landscapes’, in Master of Architecture (New Zealand: University of Auckland, 2016), http://hdl.handle.net/2292/31658, from which this chapter is drawn. 3. The Cook Islands Christian Church assumed management of all LMS operations in the country following self-governance. 4. M. Campbell, ‘Ritual Landscape in Late pre-contact Rarotonga: A Brief Reading’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 111, no. 2 (2002): 147–70. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20707059, 148. 5. M. Campbell, ‘History in Prehistory: The Oral Traditions of the Rarotongan Land Court Records’, The Journal of Pacific History 37, no. 2 (2002): 221–38. doi:10.1080/0022334022000006619, 222. 6. R. P. Gilson and R. G. Crocombe, The Cook Islands, 1820–1950 (Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press in association with the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1980), 6. 7. H. Henry, The Coming of Tomorrow: European Exploration and ‘Discovery’ of the Cook Islands (Auckland, New Zealand: Sovereign Pacific Publishing, 2002), 101–4. 8. W. Gill, Gems from the Coral Islands (Rarotonga, Cook Islands: Cook Islands Library and Museum Society, 2001) (Original work London, United Kingdom: Elliot Stock, 1871), 3–12, 58. 9. M. G. Tauira, ‘The Maohi Missionaries and the London Missionary Society, 1821–1855’, in Doctor of Philosophy in Theology (New Zealand: The University of Auckland, 2006), 105. 10. Taʾunga, The Works of Ta’unga: Records of a Polynesian Traveller in the South Seas, 1833–1896, ed. R. G. Crocombe and M. T. Crocombe (Canberra, Australia: Australian National University Press, 1968), 3; W. Gill, Gems from the Coral Islands, 13. 11. H. Henry, ‘Christianity Created a Nation’: Arrival of the Gospel and the Early Mission Years in the Cook Islands (Auckland, New Zealand: Sovereign Pacific Publishing, 2003), 57. 12. Maretu, Cannibals and Converts: Radical Change in the Cook Islands, ed. M. T. Crocombe (Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1983), 77.

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13. R. Walter, Anai’o: The Archaeology of a Fourteenth Century Polynesian Community in the Cook Islands (Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Archaeological Association, 1998), 106. 14. Maretu, Cannibals and Converts, 83. The epidemic killed a seventh of the island’s population (J. Guiart, ‘The Millenarian Aspect of Conversion to Christianity in the South Pacific’, in Cultures of the Pacific; Selected Readings, ed. T. G. Harding and B. J. Wallace (New York, NY: Free Press, 1970), 297–412, 402). The Cook Islands historian Howard Henry notes that islanders were struck by the ability of European missionaries to tend to the sick without being infected themselves, which led to many conversions for ‘protection’ purposes (Henry, ‘Christianity Created a Nation’, 79, 80). 15. Gilson and Crocombe, The Cook Islands, 1820–1950, 27. 16. Taʾunga, The Works of Ta’unga, 8. 17. E. T. W. Nia, ‘Are korero’, Master of Art & Design, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, 2010, http:// hdl.handle.net/10292/932, 23. 18. J. Budgett, ‘Coral Architecture of the Cook Islands’, in Master of Architecture (New Zealand: University of Auckland, 2007), 89–91. 19. R. Dixon, ‘“The ties that bind…” Rematerializing Land, Church and State in Mangaia, Cook Islands’, in Cook Islands Art and Architecture, ed. R. Dixon, L. Crowl and M. T. Crocombe (Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, 2016), 400–17, 401, 402. 20. J. D. Gray, ‘A History of Rarotonga, 1800–1883’, in Doctor of Philosophy in History (Dunedin, New Zealand: The University of Otago, 1975), 402, 403; Maretu, Cannibals and Converts, 186. 21. The limited role of European missionaries in the Cook Islands’ conversion experience is notable; the larger islands of Rarotonga, Mangaia and Aitutaki seldom had more than one resident European missionary, and many of the smaller islands had none. LMS mission records make little mention of Matavera’s establishment and indicate that they had little, if any, involvement in its design or construction. See G. Gill, Letter from George Gill to the Reverend Arthur Tidman (London Missionary Society Records, 1857–9) (AJCP Reel 41, Box 27, Folder 3, Jacket B). [Microfilm]. Canberra: Australian Joint Copying Project: 31 March 1858; W. Gill, Gems from the Coral Islands, 37; T. R. Hiroa, [P. H. Buck], Mangaia and the Mission, ed. R. Dixon and T. Parima (Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific), in association with Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, 1993, 11; Maretu, Cannibals and Converts, 7. 22. Sissons, ‘From Post to Pillar: God-houses and Social Fields in Nineteenth-Century Rarotonga’, Journal of Material Culture 12, no. 1 (2007): 47–63. doi:10.1177/1359183507074561, 52, 57–9. 23. Campbell, ‘Ritual Landscape’, 154, 164; M. Kecskemeti, ‘The Politics, Poetics and Performance of Sacred Space: The Sacred Space of Cook Islands Christian Churches’, in Master of Arts in Anthropology (New Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington, 2012), http://hdl.handle.net/10063/2474, 63, 72. 24. The hurricane of March 1846 had a severe impact both physically and psychologically on Rarotongan residents, and an aim of coral stone constructions was to withstand them. See Gray, ‘A history of Rarotonga, 1800–1883’, 393–403; W. Gill, Gems from the Coral Islands, 41–3. 25. The changed nature of churchscapes is explored further in C. Hill, ‘The “Unchanged” Place: Lifescapes of Cook Island Historic Churches’, Historic Environment 31, no. 1 (2019): 34–5. 26. See S. Dalvi, and M. Dalvi, ‘Dismantling Cosmopolitanism: Transformations in the Sacred Heritage of the Non-monumental in the Konkan’, in New Architecture and Urbanism: Development of Indian Traditions, ed.  D.  Prashad (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 112–17, for a similar situation in the historic Konkan division of the state of Maharashtra India where locally-driven processes of destruction and modernization have been contentious. Charmaine ‘Ilaiū’s analysis of ‘inasi in Tonga is also relevant; C. ‘Ilaiū‘, ‘‘Inasi: Tonga’s Reason for its Western fale’, in Cultural Crossroads: Proceedings of the 26th International SAHANZ Conference: The University of Auckland, New Zealand, 2–5 July 2009, ed. J. Gatley. (Auckland: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2009), 1–16.

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27. Interview RI.01; supported by RI.03; RI.14; RI.15. For an explanation of the code system used for anonymizing interviews, see Hill, ‘The Cook Islands Christian Churches of Rarotonga’, 21. 28. J. B. Jackson, ‘A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time’, Design Quarterly 164 (Spring, 1995): 25. 29. A. Refiti, ‘Whiteness, Smoothing and the Origin of Samoan Architecture’, Interstices: A Journal of Architecture and Related Arts 10 (2009): 10–11. 30. M. P. J. Reilly, Ancestral Voices from Mangaia: A History of the Ancient Gods and Chiefs (Auckland, New Zealand: The Polynesian Society, 2009), 90, 91. 31. RG.01; RI.02; RI.05; RI.07; RI.14; RI.16; RI.17. 32. RI.03. 33. RI.07. 34. Z. Aygen, International Heritage and Historic Building Conservation: Saving the World’s Past (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), 38, 48, 51, 134. 35. As has been the case in many African nations (see Aygen, International heritage, 50, 51; J. Lagae, ‘From “Patrimoine Partagé” to “Whose Heritage”? Critical Reflections on Colonial Built Heritage in the City of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo’, in Remembering, Forgetting and City Builders, ed. T. Fenster and H. Yacobi (Farnham, United Kingdom: Ashgate, 2010), 175–91. 36. V. S. Lockwood, ‘The Global Imperative and Pacific Island Societies’, in Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2004), 1–39, 27. 37. Sissons, ‘From post to Pillar’, 61. 38. R. Dixon, personal communication, 4 January 2016; RI.06; RI.09. One interviewee suggested that this was particularly the case in Rarotonga but less so in other islands (NI.03). 39. RI.03; RI.04; RI.11. See J. L. Flexner and M. Spriggs, ‘Mission Sites as Indigenous Heritage in Southern Vanuatu’, Journal of Social Archaeology 15, no. 2 (2015): 184–209. doi:10.1177/1469605314568251, 203) for a similar perspective in Vanuatu. 40. Put forward by J. Budgett, ‘Congregating Practices: Church Building in the Cook Islands’, in Celebration: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, ed. A. Leach and G. Matthewson (Napier, New Zealand: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2005), 65–71, Dixon (‘The ties that bind…’) and Sissons (‘From post to pillar’). RG.01; RI.08; RI.10; RI.11. 41. J. Connell, ‘Island Dreaming: The Contemplation of Polynesian Paradise’, Journal of Historical Geography 29, no.  4 (2003): 554–81. doi:10.1006/jhge.2002.0461, 571–3; R. M. Keesing, ‘Creating the Past: Custom and Identity in the Contemporary Pacific’, The Contemporary Pacific 1, no. 1/2 (1989): 19–42, http://www.jstor.org. ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/stable/23701891, 20–3. 42. See for example Cook Islands Tourism Corporation, ‘Arts & Culture’, accessed 17 September 2020, https:// cookislands.travel/experiences/arts-culture. 43. RI.17; N. Maui, personal communication, 23 February 2016. 44. Field research conversations indicated that the location of marae is not advertised to outsiders generally, and tourists are not encouraged to seek them out. While caretakers of some marae welcome visitors who do come, others actively discourage approach. Even when marae are included in tourist tours, people are advised to seek guidance from a tribal leader and stay off the marae itself unless formally invited. 45. RI.06; RI.19. 46. Kecskemeti, ‘The Politics, Poetics and Performance’, 40–5. 47. J. Budgett, ‘Contested Terrain: Heritage Conservation in the Cook Islands’, in Contested Terrains: Conference Proceedings: XXIII Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, ed. T. McMinn, J. R. Stephens and S. Basson (Perth, Australia: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 2006), 47–53, 51.

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48. RI.01; RI.04; RI.06; RI.08; RI.11; RI.12; RI.18; RG.01. 49. H. Henry, ‘Trustees sought for Historic Places Trust’, Cook Islands News, 28 June 2014, http://www. cookislandsnews.com/item/47394-trustees-sought-for-historic-places-trust/47394-trustees-sought-for-historic-places-trust; RG.01. 50. J. Nicholas, personal communication, 27 February 2016. 51. RG.01. 52. A. Smith, ‘Learning History through Heritage Place Management in the Pacific Islands’, The Journal of Pacific History 46, no. 2 (2011): 228–35. doi:10.1080/00223344.2011.607271, 230. 53. R. G. Crocombe, Voluntary Service and Development in the Cook Islands (Rarotonga, Cook Islands: Cook Islands Extension Centre and the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1990), 5–9; M. Ernst, Winds of Change: Rapidly Growing Religious Groups in the Pacific Islands (Suva, Fiji: Pacific Conference of Churches, 1994), 276; Statistics Office, Cook Islands Population Census 2016. 54. RG.01; RI.01; RI.02; RI.04; RI.06; RI.07; RI.11; RI.12; RI.13; RI.14. 55. RI.10; RI.12; RI.14; RI.18. 56. RI.03; RI.09; RI.11; RI.12. For discussion of the Cook Islands’ existing land tenure system, see R. G. Crocombe, M. Tongia and T. Araitia, ‘Absentee Landowners in the Cook Islands: Consequences of Change to Tradition’, in Making Land Work: Volume Two: Case Studies on Customary Land and Development in the Pacific (Canberra, Australia: Australian Agency for International Development, 2008). Retrieved from http://dfat.gov.au/about-us/ publications/Documents/MLW_VolumeTwo_CaseStudy_8.pdf, 163. 57. RI.02; RI.05; RI.07, RI.13. 58. NI.02. 59. Crocombe, Voluntary Service and Development, 56; confirmed by interviewees. 60. J. Altrocchi and L. Altrocchi, ‘Polyfaceted Psychological Acculturation in Cook Islanders’, Journal of CrossCultural Psychology 26, no. 4 (1995): 426–40. doi:10.1177/0022022195264007, 431, 437–8; T. K. Fitzgerald and Y. Underhill-Sem, Paddling a Multicultural Canoe in Bicultural Waters: Ethnic Identity and Aspirations of Second Generation Cook Islanders in New Zealand (Christchurch, New Zealand: Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, 1996), 1–11; NI.01; NI.03; H. C. Triandis, ‘Individualism-Collectivism and Personality’, Journal of Personality 69, no. 6 (2001): 907–24. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.696169, 908–12. 61. NI.03. 62. NI.02. 63. R. G. Crocombe and M. T. Crocombe (eds.), Akono’anga Maori: Cook Islands Culture (Rarotonga, Cook Islands: Institute of Pacific Studies in association with the Cook Islands Extension Centre, University of the South Pacific, the Cook Islands Cultural and Historic Places Trust, and the Ministry of Cultural Development, 2003), 334. 64. See M. Glendinning, The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation: Antiquity to Modernity (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013), 413–30; Aygen, International Heritage, 31, 32; T. Winter, ‘Heritage Studies and the Privileging of Theory’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 5 (2014): 556–72. doi:10.1080/1 3527258.2013.798671, 559, 569. 65. B. McKay and A. Walmsley, ‘Maori Time: Notions of Space, Time and Building Form in the South Pacific’, IDEA Journal 4, no. 1 (2003): 85–106, http://idea-edu.com/journal/2003-idea-journal/, 86, 87; A. Refiti, ‘The Forked Centre: Duality & Privacy in Polynesian Spaces & Architecture’, AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 4, no. 1 (2008): 99, 100. 66. Such as the annual Te Maeva Nui celebrations – see S. Wilson, ‘PM praises TMN 2015’, Cook Islands News, 18 August 2015, http://www.cookislandsnews.com/item/53414-pm-praises-tmn-2015/53414-pm-praises-tmn-2015. 67. Smith, ‘Learning History’, 229.

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68. B. J. Graham and P. Howard, ‘Introduction: Heritage and Identity’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity (Farnham, United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), 1–18, 8; M. Martin and T. Su’a, Pacific Island Youth Today: Questions Some Are Asking. Report (Auckland, New Zealand: Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand: Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, 2011), http://knoxcentre.ac.nz/wp-content/ uploads/2012/11/Sua-Research-18-INDEX.pdf, 1. 69. See SPREP (Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme). ‘Pacific Climate Change Portal: Cook Islands’, accessed 17 September 2020, https://www.pacificclimatechange.net/country/cook-islands; UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). ‘The Cook Islands Prepares for Climate Change’, Last updated 4 April 2019, https://www.adaptation-undp.org/cook-islands-prepares-climate-change. 70. See K. Tanirau, ‘Covid-19: Cook Islands’ Plea to NZ: We Are Family, Family Support Each Other’, Stuff, 10 June 2020, https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/300031951/covid19-cook-islands-plea-to-nz-we-are-­familyfamily-support-each-other; L. Ma’ia’i, ‘“Devastating Impact”: South Auckland’s Pasifika Bear Brunt of New Covid-19 Outbreak’, The Guardian, 18 August 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/19/a-­devastating-impact-on-our-people-south-aucklands-pasifika-carry-the-weight-of-new-covid-19-outbreak; and M. Henrickson, ‘Kiwis and COVID-19: The Aotearoa New Zealand Response to the Global Pandemic’, The International Journal of Community and Social Development 2, no. 2 (1 July 2020): 121–33. 71. F. Syme-Buchanan, ‘Keeping Cultural Identity Alive’, Cook Islands News, 22 January 2016, http://www.­ cookislandsnews.com/item/56166-keeping-cultural-identify-alive.

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15  Appropriating the native: Shifting definitions of the vernacular in twentieth-century Philippine architecture

  EDSON G. CABALFIN

Architecture and nationalism In the last century, modern architecture has been emblematically enmeshed with discourses of nationalism in the process of engaging such architecture as symbolic of new nations.1 By nationalism here, one possible meaning, as historian Ernest Gellner defined it, is ‘primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’.2 Nationalism, according to political scientist Benedict Anderson, can also be linked to the creation of nations as ‘imagined communities’, a shared and collective mental construct of belongingness to a community that is necessarily finite and sovereign.3 Following the ideology of nationalism, as historian Anthony Smith explains it, includes the core principles of ‘collective self-­determination of the people, the expression of national character and individuality, and finally the vertical division of the world into unique nations contributing their special genius to the common fund of humanity’.4 Architectural trends in countries such as Australia, Canada, Nigeria, India and Papua New Guinea demonstrate aggressive promotion of a national architectural style to communicate their nation’s political sovereignty and imagined community.5 We can see that it is through these three doctrines that architecture in nationalist discourse operates within: a national architecture that expresses the will of the nation to be sovereign (by being divergent from the colonial architectural style), articulates national character (by having a unique and distinct cultural imagery), and manifests this participation in international discourse (by infusing international modern architectural style). In architecture, the principle of a nation contributing their ‘special genius’ to the ‘common fund of humanity’ is often interpreted as finding unique and easily identifiable forms and expressions in architecture. Modern architecture participates in the nationalist discourse by both being a cultural artefact and a cultural device of nationalism. As a cultural artefact of nationalism, modern architecture can be seen as an after-effect of how nations have utilized modernism to express this new sovereignty and collective self-­ determination. We have seen this in the case for example of Turkey, where new forms of housing, dress, language, among others, were deployed to construct a progressive image during the rise of Ataturk’s New Republic.6 As a cultural device of nationalism, modern architecture functions also as a medium by which nationalism is propagated and perpetuated. This phenomenon can be illustrated by reference to Singapore and Malaysia where architecture was utilized as imagery and means to indicate sovereignty after British colonial rule.7 By both being an agent and a product of nationalism, we can come to understand architecture not merely as a finished product that we see and experience, but more importantly recognize it as an active participant in the formation of our consciousness as national subjects. As a cultural artefact and device, architecture is relevant in the nationalist discourse because architectural monuments serve as ‘logos of the nations’. Architecture becomes an icon, much like a religious symbol, a

shared image and explicit emblem that is replicated and reproduced in various media. Notice for example how monuments form part of the visual lexicon found in stamps, coins, international events, advertisements and other media that intend to identify a particular country or nation. This is what Benedict Anderson calls a ‘logoization’ process, which is characteristic of nation formation.8 One strategy in expressing a distinct national character is through the idea of the ‘vernacular’ in architecture. The term ‘vernacular’ is often equated with things endemic and Indigenous to a specific context.9 The vernacular is also frequently connected with what is considered ‘traditional’, the binary opposite of ‘modern’, which then further presumes that tradition is somehow immutable when compared to modernity.10 But within the context of modern architecture, vernacular forms were also seen as a point of departure in the effort to modernize and project ideas of progress, using the unadorned and geometric forms as a break from the highly ornamented types of the nineteenth century.11 As something that is connected with the autochthonous, the process of vernacularization can be understood in the case of modern architecture as a process of localizing architecture by alluding to Indigenous social, cultural, political and historical contexts. Through vernacularization, a foreign concept is made understandable to the local audience by referencing to local familiar materials and ideas. However, the idea of vernacular, and therefore what is often thought of as Indigenous to a particular place is not necessarily homogenous. What do you consider as vernacular and Indigenous in the first place?12 There is an assumption that in looking at vernacular architecture, especially as being categorized as pre-colonial architecture, it was somehow not affected by colonialism, and is therefore deemed more authentic. Architectural anthropologist Marcel Vellinga, for example points out to how twentieth-century studies and conceptions of Southeast Asian vernacular architectures have vacillated over time, including home as microcosm, house as manifestation of social structuring and relations, to dwelling as symbol.13 Architectural historian Mark Crinson also asks: ‘How might it be possible, then, to think of the vernacular as a more dynamic category, dynamic in its ability to surprise and unsettle (if considered intensely), and dynamic in its relation to other architecture (if understood in an expanded way)?’14 Following this line of thinking, can we also reconsider vernacular architecture in the Philippines as one that is fluid and dynamic, continually transforming and mediated over time? In this chapter, I attempt to trace and map out the process of vernacularization as a strategy used in expressing the national character of modern architecture in the Philippines. Here, I would like to inspect the methods and means of using an idea of vernacular by different agents including those in the private and public sectors. I will be referring to two historical periods: first, the American-colonial period from 1900 to 1945; and second, the Post-Independence/Post-Second World War period from 1946 to 1998. The following questions are posed: How and why was the idea of the vernacular used in articulating Philippine national identity in modern architecture? What were the similarities and differences of concepts of vernacularization in architecture by different agents throughout twentieth-century Philippines? And, what are the implications of these strategies in the debates of the production of architecture and identity? In coming to terms with modernity and nationalism in architecture, I argue that using the idea of ‘vernacular’ is not an unproblematic and a neutral strategy. Rather, vernacularization in modern architecture is a highly politicized and biased operation.

Pre-1945: American colonialism and architecture Americans during the first half of the twentieth century used architecture and urban planning as a means of establishing colonial control in the Philippines. After the historic signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, the Philippines was ceded to the United States, which contributed to the launching of the ascendancy

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of the United States as a superpower.15 Daniel Burnham, the famed architect and planner who designed Washington D.C., Chicago and San Francisco, was asked to redesign the capital city of Manila in 1905.16 Under his plan, Manila became a rationalized and organized system of circulation networks, activity zones and open spaces that emphasized efficiency, order and progress, following closely the principles of the City Beautiful Movement. Concurrent with this urban re-imagination and colonial control was codification of sanitation and hygiene as parts of these ideals of American progress and development.17 After Burnham finished the plan, the substantiation of the new urban order was passed on to William E. Parsons, who was hired as the Chief Consulting Architect of the Philippine Bureau of Public Works.18 He was then tasked to create a new architectural imagery for the Manila cityscape. For the official architectures he focused on Neo-classical structures that followed Greco-Roman models. While working on the new civic buildings, Parsons may have heeded Burnham’s initial assessment of Manila’s Spanish colonial architectural heritage as: ‘ … especially interesting and in view of their beauty and practical suitability to local conditions could be profitably taken as examples of future structures’.19 We can imagine then that Burnham and Parsons shared the view that the existing Spanish colonial architecture was considered Indigenous, therefore, something that was to be preserved, and more so, to serve as inspiration for future designs. In similar vein, American architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler wrote in Architectural Record magazine in 1900, his assessment of the Spanish contributions in the US recent ‘acquisitions’ after the SpanishAmerican war of 1898, which included Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.20 He pointed out how the United States should learn from the ways by which Spanish-colonial architecture in these new American colonies had already shown the effectiveness of adapting to the tropical climate, local materials and site conditions. He asserted that the US intervention in the Philippines should consider what was already present, and therefore the vernacular, rather than imposing new types of architecture that in his mind were not necessarily appropriate in these tropical colonies.21 Indeed, Parsons’ architectural schemas of major public structures in the archipelago, such as the Philippine General Hospital (1910), Manila Hotel (1912) and University of the Philippines in Manila (1913), were distinctively Spanish in their details but Neoclassical in their over-all forms.22 The Philippine General Hospital in Manila was planned around a series of interconnected pavilions around courtyards and linked together by covered arcades.23 The entry pavilion prominently featured a portico with a pediment combined with a hip roof, an indication of the hybridization of Spanish-colonial and Neoclassical architectural language. The University Hall at the University of the Philippines (Figure 15.1), featured colonnaded porticos with Ionic capitals patterned after Greek temples topped with a hip roof. The colonnade properly protected the windows deeply set behind from the intense glare of the sun. Parsons used reinforced concrete as a primary material for the civic architecture built by the American-colonial government, a clear declaration of breaking away with the Spanish-colonial tradition of using stone masonry for walls.24 Generally, these hybridized civic buildings represented modernity, progress and democracy – a constant visible reminder of the supposed benevolence of the American colonial rule. Another aspect of this vernacularization was Parsons’ emphasis on the tropical climate. His responses were very practical. Parsons invested in the combination of Capiz-shell/louvered window systems patterned after Spanish-colonial houses found in the Philippines.25 These window systems included two layers that control the influx of light and flow of natural ventilation: first, a screen made of wood slat louvers; and second, a wooden frame with translucent Capiz (Placuna placenta) or Windowpane Oyster shells. The Gabaldon schoolhouse, which was the prototype for all schoolhouses built during the American-colonial period, displayed the extensive use of this window system inspired from Spanish-colonial sources (Figure 15.1).26 Parsons and the Bureau of Public Works developed standardized designs of varying combinations of classrooms but basically followed the same design of elevated reinforced concrete structure with hip roofing. The

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Fig. 15.1  (Clockwise from top left) William Parsons, University Hall at the University of the Philippines in Manila, built in 1913. Source: A.N. Rebori, ‘The Work of William E. Parsons in the Philippine Islands, Part I’, Architectural Record, April 1917; Juan Nakpil, Detail of façade of Capitol Theater featuring Filipinas garbed in traditional costume, Manila, built in 1935. Source: Fmgverzon, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons; Juan Arellano, Metropolitan Theater of Manila, constructed in 1938. Source: Jwilz12345, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; William Parsons, Gabaldon School House, Boac, Marinduque. Source: Joelaldor, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

schools are significantly open on all sides but covered with the capiz shell-louver window system. Much like his other civic buildings, the schools similarly were designed with large fenestrations allowing the generous flow of natural ventilation through the buildings. Wide eaves further protected the interior spaces from the intense sun and torrential rains. These very tropical responses came to be Parsons’ signature style throughout his career in the Philippines. While American-colonial administrators dominated the production of architecture in the archipelago during the early part of the twentieth century, Filipino architects were also being trained through government offices and abroad. In the 1920s and 1930s, architects who were trained in the United States and Europe came back to the Philippines and served under the Bureau of Public Works.27 The transference of architectural knowledge and subsequently of foreign styles from Europe was possible through the education

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of Filipinos abroad. While the foreign styles were applied in the Philippines, this was not simply a passive transfer through Filipinos as they actively adapted the ideas from Europe onto to the local context. Among the notable structures that use vernacularization during this time were some that were inspired by the Art Deco style. The decorative style that was popular in Europe in the early part of the twentieth century emphasized classical composition and at the same time used stylized and abstracted ornamental forms.28 Art Deco already incorporated various cultures in its lexicon, such as Egyptian, Mayan-Aztec, Assyrian and Mesopotamian, among others, and therefore was ripe to accommodate Filipino motifs. The Metropolitan Theater of Manila, designed by Juan Arellano in 1938, was a hybrid of Beaux Arts classicism and tropical Art Deco (Figure 15.1).29 Focusing on Philippine flora and fauna, Arellano rendered the classical building in tropical motifs such as bananas, mangoes, hibiscus, birds-of-paradise flowers and bamboo as applied to wall decals, medallions, bas relief, friezes and ceilings. The front facade of the theatre is marked with a large stained-glass window with translucent glass forming patterns of tropical flowers and plants. The ceiling of the main auditorium was adorned with alternating strips of latticework with bananas and mangoes, fruits common to the Philippines. The Capitol Theater along Escolta in Manila designed by Juan Nakpil in 1935, features on its facade rural tropical scenes. Filipino women garbed in traditional lowlanders costume are the central symbols in the façade (Figure 15.1). The distinctive Philippine low-­relief pattern was set in contrast to the ziggurat stepping mass of the entry volume. Thus, Filipino designers at this time were consciously appropriating imagery and icons that they believe were representative of Philippine culture.30 Similar to the approaches of the American-colonial administrators, the Art Deco architecture of that period consciously adapted features that responded to the tropical climate of the country. Among the environmental interventions commonly used in Art Deco architecture in the Philippines were large window openings, overhangs protecting the fenestrations, and recessed windows. The Far Eastern University Main Building in Manila, designed by Pablo Antonio and opened in 1935, featured deeply recessed windows framed by thick columns on its front facade.31 At the streamlined Eugenio Lopez Mansion in Iloilo, designed by Fernando Ocampo in 1936, the nautical themes of porthole windows, curved corners and speed lines are tropicalized with recessed windows protected with thin concrete protrusions.32 As the Art Deco style was born from the cold climate of France and other parts of Europe, and given that air-conditioning was not yet available during that time, the style needed to be adapted to the hot-humid climate once it reached the Philippine shores.

Post-1945: Post-colonialism and architecture The Philippines officially declared independence from the United States on 4 July 1946, establishing the ‘Third Republic’. This ushered in a new era not only in terms of a political sovereignty but also an economical and cultural independence. Post-war reconstruction efforts allowed the rebuilding of war-torn areas, such as Manila, which prompted massive building activity during the mid-century. The immediate period after the Pacific war was characterized by the reconstruction and rehabilitation of schools, hospitals, government buildings, irrigation facilities and other public infrastructure.33 The post-independence period signalled a renewed interest in things Filipino. The idea of ‘Filipino’, whether in the arts, literature, history, sciences and technology, stood out as the rallying point for nationalist movements. Culturally, the post-independence period reinvigorated issues of national identity among the intelligentsia. The debate on what constituted Filipino national identity dominated the discussions in and around academic circles.34 In the arts, Indigenous art forms became the focal point of research and inspiration for many postwar artists and scholars from the 1950s onwards. Because of the suppression of

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pre-colonial artistic traditions during the Spanish-colonial era and the dominance of American culture during the American-colonial period, the revival of traditional, folk and Indigenous arts was invariably a resolute statement declaring the postcolonial condition. At that time, being Filipino meant having a distinct and essential national culture that was different from other world cultures. In the field of architecture, the post-war resurgence of nationalism was manifested in the search for a ‘Filipino national’ architecture. The discourse of nationalism in architecture argued for a distinctive type of architecture that supposedly reflected the context, culture and history of Filipinos and the Philippines.35 Some of the foremost architects of the postwar period had grappled with the question ‘What is Filipino Architecture?’ as an embodiment of this search for a national architecture. Filipino Architect Angel E. Nakpil, a graduate of Harvard, for example commenting in 1953 on the nature of ‘Filipino Architecture’ offered this observation: When I say Filipino architecture, do I mean nipa huts rendered in concrete and rice stacks rendered in wood and technicolor lights? No, heaven forbid. The adaptations of forms, shapes, and decorations of the past is permissible only, I believe, as an applied art. But never in architectural design. It would be just as senseless for New York designers to superimpose one log cabin upon another and thereby claim to have created a truly American building one hundred and twenty or more stories high. Architecture can and must express the culture and civilization of a people at a given place and time, without resorting to the external symbols of that culture or that civilization. Does a carabao’s head, or a rice-stack design or a cogon roof make any building therefore Filipino?36

Nakpil called for a re-evaluation of the definition of ‘Filipino Architecture’, which during that time seemed to focus on the forms derived from Indigenous sources. He continued to argue that what makes architecture ‘Filipino’, is architecture that makes the Filipino ‘modern’ and satisfies the Filipino spiritually and materially: (T)his map of varied descent, this world citizen at the crossroads of east and west, this gay freedom-loving upholder of family traditions, this frivolous but responsible pater familias with a large brood.37

Thus, for him, Filipino architecture is product of the present and the past, of modernity and tradition. Furthermore, Nakpil maintained that Filipino architecture is not just simply the work of the architect but also includes the participation of the client and the homeowner. He admonished the Filipino public: ‘I say therefore, do not be content with copies and imitations of foreign houses, demand a house of your own with an architecture all your own.’38 The architect Angel E. Nakpil, also advocated modern architecture at that time as evidenced in his works such as the glass encased staircase of the National Press Club (1954), the cantilevered triangular-shaped floors of the Lopez Museum (1960), and the slick concrete and glass composition of the Picache Building (built in 1962, now renamed the Philippine Savings Bank), the first modern skyscraper in Manila. His architectural language clearly followed Bauhaus modernism, a result of his educational training at Harvard. Trained under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, Nakpil encouraged the development of Filipino architecture not by simply using ornament derived from local and folk sources, but ardently believed in the use of modern building materials and architectural form to express the context and values of Filipinos.39 Writing in 1966, architect Paterno Alcudia, in another instance, posed the question of whether Filipino architects could develop a ‘native architecture’ that would clearly evoke the national identity of the country: Now then, an architecture would become identifiable with the art, culture and civilization of the designer or user if its creator applied the art of his locality for the aesthetic treatment of the structure and used the engineering techniques of his time and place and more particularly, made use of the native materials

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available which effectively served the requirement and function of the structure. If so, then architecture can and by large, be considered as vernacular or native.40

Underlying his article was a search for what can be considered as identifiable characteristics of Philippine architecture. He cited the nipa palm hut as the perfect example of Philippine architecture, which suited the functional and structural requirements of building, a true sign of a genuine ‘native’ architecture.41 He illustrated his article with examples such as the 1964 New York World’s Fair Philippine pavilion, residences, gas stations and restaurants that similarly borrowed roof forms and decorative elements from Indigenous Philippine architecture. These examples though, it seems for him are not truly representative of Philippine architecture as they are merely applying borrowed elements from different Philippine groups: Let us not mistake ornamentation as architecture. The placing or integrating of ornaments taken from different tribes or ethnic groups in different parts of the Philippines into the structure of a building will certainly not, in any manner, characterize that building as Philippine.42

For Alcudia, therefore, the external ornaments are not sufficient in defining Philippine architecture. According to his understanding of Philippine architecture, the reinterpretation of vernacular building traditions for Philippine pavilions of the twentieth-century cannot be considered as Filipino. During the 1960s and the 1970s, under the presidency of Ferdinand E. Marcos, architecture was seen as an avenue for ‘Filipno-ness’. First Lady Imelda Marcos, for example, advocated a return to supposedly folk cultures as means of achieving a genuine national Filipino identity. In a speech delivered at the Fourth Annual Convention of the United Architects of the Philippines at Manila Peninsula Hotel on 17 December 1978, Mrs. Marcos admonished and then challenged Filipino architects to create original work that could be considered as true Philippine architecture. Philippine architecture, according to Mrs. Marcos, was that which satisfied the need of Filipinos for basic shelter, reflected the values of Filipinos, utilized native materials with new technology and was sensitive to the tropical and earthquake conditions of the archipelago. Specifically, she was keen on promoting local and Indigenous traditions, values, forms and technology, but she was also clear in not necessarily espousing a form of parochial nativism.43 Among the Filipino architects who were under the patronage of First Lady Marcos were Leandro V. Locsin (1928–94) and Francisco Mañosa (1931–2019) who actively advocated for a nationalist discourse in Philippine architecture. For Locsin nationalism in architecture was about the country’s ideals and aspirations: Nationalism in architecture may thus be defined as the expression of national identity through architectural form as influenced by history and culture. It is also the response to political, economic, social and cultural concerns and needs, a response that provides appropriate structures, expresses values and ideals, and endeavors to shape the future.44

At the 1970 Osaka World’s Fair, Locsin reinterpreted the soaring and forward-looking attitude of the country at that time through the dramatic sweeping form of the Philippine Pavilion. Although Locsin at times made references to the artistic expressions of various Philippine ethno-linguistic groups, he nevertheless tended to favour the more abstracted forms of modernism as a legitimate representation of Filipino-ness. His various works at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex (built between 1966 and 1982) for example, brutalist in their overall attitude, were still evocative of the floating qualities of Indigenous bamboo and palm huts raised on bamboo stilts (Figure 15.2).45 Possibly the only historical reference that is unmistakable is his evocations of the hipped roofs inspired from the lowland traditional house, or bahay kubo. His residential projects reveal the references to the Spanish-colonial bahay na bato wood and stone houses of the wealthy, like the house in Silay City in which he was raised.46 The same reference was translated into his larger civic architectures as concrete hipped

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Fig. 15.2  (Clockwise from top left) Leandro Locsin, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila, built in 1969 Source: patrickroque01, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons; Leandro Locsin, National Arts Center, Mt. Makiling, Laguna, built in 1976. Source: nixwrites, CC BYSA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

roofs. This approach is exemplified by his hipped roof-dominated buildings such as the Population Center (1974) and the Nutrition Center of the Philippines, both in Makati (1975), the National Arts Center (1976) in Mt. Makiling, Laguna (Figure 15.2), and one of his last projects the Malaybalay Transfiguration Chapel in Bukidnon (1994). Francisco Mañosa, similar to Locsin in terms of a search for a nationalist architecture, differed greatly in terms of his visual expressions. Mañosa was called by Asiaweek Magazine in 1982 as one of the ‘Seven Visionaries’ in developing the future of Asian architecture, and was further described as ‘the most ingenious and driven interpreter of vernacular building traditions’.47 In contrast to Locsin’s concrete brutalism, Mañosa advocated a return to the bahay kubo or the bamboo-framed and palm-thatched cuboidal native hut as the genesis of a true Philippine architecture. ‘It all starts with the bahay kubo’ declared Mañosa.48 For Mañosa, there were essential and immutable characteristics that defined Philippine architecture: ‘Filipino values, Philippine climate and the use of Indigenous materials’.49 He contended that the bahay kubo was the manifestation of this Filipino-ness: the one-room dwelling reflects the multi-functionality of space adapting to the basic Filipino family structure, the high steep roof and wide eaves combined with the raised structure on stilts adapts to the Philippine tropical climate, the usage of local and available materials highlights the sustainability of the native house. Mañosa further elaborated on the role of the Filipino architect in espousing ‘Filipino Architecture’ arguing that ‘if we are to say that the bahay kubo is the cornerstone of Philippine architecture, then it is incumbent upon us, the architects, to find ways to develop from that

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essential structure to produce forms that are relevant to today’s needs.’50 Other scholars such as anthropologist Fernando Zialcita, agreed with Mañosa in pointing to the bahay kubo as the wellspring of Philippine architecture.51 Mañosa’s designs for various houses, buildings, resorts and pavilions have consistently taken cue from the native hut. For example, his bamboo house project at Puerto Azul in Ternate, Cavite (completed in 1981) evocatively follows the silhouette of the bahay kubo through its steep thatched roof and wide overhangs. Literally, the structure is an expanded and larger version of the vernacular house.52 Similarly, his own house in the wealthy suburbs of Ayala Alabang, completed in 1983, reflects the steep roof forms, wide eaves and open planning of the bahay kubo, but decidedly updated in terms of materials using metals, glass and stone.53 The patterns used for decorative accents are culled from local plants such as the anahaw palm and banana. Indigenous materials such as coconut, Philippine hardwoods, grasses and reeds are pervasively applied all over the house. His design for the high-end resort Amanpulo in Palawan (completed in 1994) is consistent with the overall approach and aesthetic in combining traditional hipped roof forms with more contemporary materials such as glass and concrete.54 In a similar fashion, the Tahanang Pilipino (literally ‘Pilipino Home’), popularly known as ‘Coconut Palace’ at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex along Roxas Boulevard exploits the use of local materials in expounding an idea of Filipino in architecture (Figure 15.3).55 Supposedly designed to be the residence of Pope John Paul II on his visit to Manila in 1981, the state guesthouse was envisioned to be the embodiment of Filipino-ness: the use of Indigenous materials, the motifs from local stories and designs, the allusion to native dwellings.56 Mañosa particularly focused on coconut, a renewable Indigenous natural resource, as the take-off point for his design. Utilizing the different parts of the coconut tree, from the trunk, the fronds, to the shell and the coir, he evocatively expressed Filipino-ness through the creative exploration of Indigenous materials.57 For other projects, like the Davao Pearl Farm Resort, bamboo became the primary material for the design. The roofing was made of layers of interlocking and alternating split bamboo nodes reminiscent of the bamboo tile-like roof of the Isneg from the Cordillera region.58 All in all, Mañosa’s approach to appropriating the bahay kubo involved the literal and abstracted reinterpretation of the form and materials of the Indigenous house. Aside from Locsin and Mañosa, other Filipino architects appropriated various Indigenous architectural details and ornaments as sources of inspiration. Juan Arellano, as early as the 1960s, applied the carved wooden gable horn called tajuk pasung found in Tausug houses in the southern part of the Philippines, when he designed the Cotabato Municipal Hall in Cotabato, Mindanao (Figure 15.3). These elaborately ornamented gable ends, sometimes alluding to the horns of water buffalos, served as protective symbols common among Austronesian and Southeast Asian cultures.59 In the 1960s, various versions of the tajuk pasung were seen as an embodiment of the pre-colonial vernacular traditions often combined with the sweeping roof forms that were also typical of Austronesian houses. At the Max’s Restaurant in Quezon City, by Francisco Fajardo, the tajuk pasung was stylized, almost flattened but nevertheless recognizable, and applied on ridges of the multi-layered roofs. The restaurant, however, also owes much of its architectural vocabulary to the Polynesian-inspired architectures that were popular in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, and often connected to mid-century modernism.60 At the Holiday Hills Golf club in San Pedro, Laguna, designed by Felipe Mendoza in 1962, the elaborate carved finials are seen at various points of the roof, not just typically at the roof ridges of the vernacular Tausug house. For the Bangsamoro Government Center in Cotabato City, designed in the 1980s, the interpretation of the tajuk pasung more closely resembled the traditional application on the roof apex of the Tausug dwelling (Figure 15.3).61 The vernacular is also appropriated through literal interpretations of symbols or objects. At the 1953 Philippine International Fair, the monumental entryway, called ‘Gateway to the East’, designed by Otillo

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Fig. 15.3  (Clockwise from top left) Francisco Mañosa, Tahanang Pilipino (Pilipino Home) popularly known as the Coconut Palace at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex, Manila, built in 1980. Source: patrickroque1, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons; Cotabato Capitol Building. Source: MarkoDalisay, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons; ARMM Regional Capitol Building. Source: George Parrilla, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Arellano, featured the wide-brimmed conical-topped hat called salakot, placed atop the entrance pylons.62 The hat, typically made of dried palm frond materials, was equated in this instance with Filipino industriousness, as the hat is often used by farmers. Arellano also utilized the same symbolism when he designed the Philippine Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair where he derived its roof idiom from the farmer’s hat (Figure 15.4). In this particular translation, the grass hat was transformed into metal and raised on stilts, as if hovering above the ground.63 As these fairs promoted the agricultural industries of the Philippines, allusions to farming, hard work and determination were metaphorically expressed through familiar symbols. Still another source of inspiration is derived from Indigenous geography and geology. The Banaue Rice Terraces found in the Cordilleras, in the Northern region of the country, were the starting point for the San Miguel Corporation Main Headquarters, designed by Mañosa brothers, constructed in 1979.64 The visual imagery is uncanny. The office building is characteristically terraced in its form with plants surrounding the windows: it was a reinterpretation of Philippine landforms in glass, steel and concrete (Figure 15.4). By evoking geography and landforms, the architects evoked the rootedness to land as expression of locality. Indeed, an authentic Philippine identity here is grounded on the natural features of the archipelago.

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Fig. 15.4  (Clockwise from top left) Otillo Arellano, Philippine Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, New York, erected in 1964, demolished. Source: Edson Cabalfin collection; Mañosa Brothers, San Miguel Corporation Headquarters, Ortigas, 1976. Source: Philippine Architecture, Engineering and Construction Record, Volume 22, Number 9, 1976.

Tensions and contestations Comparing these two periods, vernacularization in the pre-1945 period, on one hand, can be said to have imported foreign styles and technology and localized them by adding local motifs and ornaments. The post-1945 period, on the other hand, is the converse. It can be described as first stemming from an Indigenous source (i.e. a form, an ornament or a concept) and then being reinterpreted using foreign technology and idiom. This implies a shift of the understanding of the vernacular in architectural design in the Philippines. Before the Second World War then, the vernacular was seen as something that was to be added, submissive to the over-all foreign technology. But post-war designers saw the vernacular as a way of asserting distinctiveness by using it as the dominant feature of design. In this context, distinctiveness was acknowledged as a means by which the Philippines can contribute to the ‘common fund of humanity’, an articulation of a core doctrine of nationalist ideology.65 Furthermore, this representation can be considered as a political declaration of sovereignty from its former colonizers.

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Despite this shift in the use of Indigenous motifs, the tropical character remains constant throughout the twentieth century. Parsons in the early twentieth century and later, Locsin and Mañosa, identified the importance of the tropical climate in their design. For several architects and designers, tropical-ness is an expression of regional character.66 Another significant idea was the search for a Filipino architectural archetype, much similar to the Marc Antoine Laugier’s idea of a ‘primitive hut’.67 Mañosa believes in the lowland house of bahay kubo as the ‘primitive hut’ and thus the origin of Filipino architecture. He asserted that the bahay kubo represented the  true Filipino character in architecture: one that was culturally and environmentally sensitive to the conditions of the Filipinos.68 Thus for Mañosa, Filipino-ness is synonymous with a supposed primeval or primordial vernacular tradition. It is assumed that by incorporating the vernacular, the architectural designs become more authentic because their supposed origins are primordial and primeval. The authenticity of an imagined national character is thus established by quoting and referencing assumed essential and organic ties. The Indigenous is portrayed here as natural and consequently, immutable and legitimate. Conceptions of the vernacular by the American architects Burnham and Parsons are quite different from the notions of the post-war Filipino architects Locsin and Mañosa. As I pointed out earlier, on one hand, American colonizers perceived the Spanish-colonial architecture as the vernacular. On the other hand, the post-war architects included in their definition the various Philippine ethno-linguistic groups. The categories are not as unchallengeable and static as they are often portrayed. We cannot simply use a singular and monolithic definition of the vernacular. The colonizer-colonized relation is also highlighted here. Nationalist programmes in the Philippines during the first half of the twentieth century were conflated with the colonial programmes of the United States. An asymmetrical relationship existed between the colonized and the colonizer: the American colonial architects used the vernacular to portray the control of the colonizer over the colonial subjects. By using the Spanishcolonial vernacular tradition set within the over-all Beaux Arts classical schema, Parsons was also depicting the subjugation of the local to that of the national. The buildings, in short, were also communicating the colonial presence in the islands. It was not simply an innocent use of an architectural style but, was instead the careful orchestration of visual imagery geared towards the colonial master’s intention of domination. If we are to argue that for a distinct national identity to be valid, we often contend that it needs to be predicated on originality and authenticity. However, a national architecture that is based on vernacular pre-colonial architecture becomes problematic. I argue that what is perceived as vernacular may not be really original and authentic in the first place. Vernacular architectures are not necessarily pure and pristine. Just because there have been no records of the transformation of these vernacular architectures does not mean that they have not changed in time. Indigenous architectures also changed and transformed through time, even before colonial encounters. As more and more studies on vernacular architecture from many parts of the world are also published, both now established and emerging research indicates that vernacular architecture indeed changes and transforms over time.69 The focus on the tropical climate as a category for national identity is also not free of any problems. If tropicality were indeed a fundamental basis for national identity, then what would distinguish the Philippines from the other nations that also have a tropical climate? As the Philippines shares similar tropical conditions as its Southeast Asian neighbours, does this render the Philippines not unique and original anymore? While it is true that climatological influence does bear distinguishable marks on architecture, it is not enough to establish national identity based solely on the tropical characteristics.70 Politics of representation also surface in this debate. Selected sets of symbols that are appropriated become problematic because they may not truly represent the cultural heterogeneity of the Philippines. The

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image seen earlier of the Filipina wearing traditional costume at the Capitol Theater is biased towards the lowland Christianized Filipino cultures. The bahay kubo that Mañosa valorize as the Filipino ‘primitive hut’ is similarly restricted to the lowland cultures. Therefore, some Philippine cultures are included while others are excluded in the national narrative. Moreover, the act itself of selecting particular motifs and forms is not an innocent and unbiased operation. Which elements are appropriated? Who dictates the choosing of these elements? Who authorizes their usage in public architecture? In the cases presented, members of a cultural elite selected the symbols that were appropriated. As Ernest Gellner pointed out, nationalism is ‘the general imposition of a high culture on society, where previous low cultures had taken up the lives of the majority and in some cases of the totality of the population’.71 The imaginings of a national culture were based and prejudiced towards the ideas of architects, designers and leaders who were trained within an educational system that was, and still is colonially dominated. As Partha Chatterjee pointed out: ‘Even our imaginations must remain forever colonized’.72 Evidently, whoever is in position has the ability to influence and dictate the construction of national identity. While it is true that Filipino designers and architects did not find it problematic to use local and Indigenous motifs and ideas in the development of modern architecture, localization cannot be merely thought of as an appendage of modernization. Instead localization should be construed as part of the discourse of modernity. In the case of the Philippines, vernacularization was understood as the means that the country could now truly participate in the international discussion. By asserting the uniqueness of the modern architecture in the Philippines, the nation was therefore contributing to the common world knowledge and culture. It is now apparent that the category of the vernacular as it was used in the formation of modern architecture cannot be assumed as a neutral act in the design process. As such, the use of the vernacular is always a political act. Through time, the conception of the vernacular has been transformed and redefined to match the needs of whoever is invoking the idea itself. Vernacularization then, is a highly suspect category. In conclusion, there is not only a need to expand and rethink the notions of what ‘vernacular’ means, but also to reconfigure the parameters for defining national identity in architecture. The understanding of vernacular must change from one that is monolithic and singular to one that is heterogeneous, polyvalent and dynamic. I believe that the discourse of national identity in architecture should shift from a question of origin to a question of practice. While the question of where we came from is important, we should not be completely oblivious to the dynamic practices of human subjectivity formation. The true origins of Filipino architecture are still debatable and may not be fully understood at this point. Instead, I propose that we refocus our understanding of how identity is practised and how this knowledge of our identity formation can lead to more empowering and ennobling projects in the future.

Notes 1. Abidin Kusno, ‘Rethinking the Nation’, in The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory, ed. C. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen (London: Sage Publications, 2012), 213–30. 2. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 1. 3. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition (London: Verso Books, 1991), 6–7 4. Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism (London: Duckworth, 1971), 23. 5. See for example works by Lawrence Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992).

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6. Sibel Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2001). 7. Nor Hayati Hussain, ‘Nation Building and Modern Architecture in Malaysia’ and Jiat Hwee Chang, ‘Before and Behind the Pioneers of Modern Architecture in Singapore’, DOCOMOMO Journal, no. 57 (2017): 30–7; 56–63; Chee Kien Lai, Building Merdeka: Independence Architecture in Kuala Lumpur, 1957–1966 (Kuala Lumpur: Petronas, 2007) 8. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 182–3. 9. Paul Oliver (ed.), Shelter and Society (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1969), 7–12; Mete Turan (ed.), Vernacular Architecture: Paradigms of Environmental Response (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1990). 10. Robert Brown and Daniel Maudlin, ‘Concepts of Vernacular Architecture’, in The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory, ed. C. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen (London: Sage Publications, 2012), 340–55. 11. Paul Oliver, ‘Attitudes in the Modern Movement’, in Shelter and Society, ed. Paul Oliver (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1969), 16–21; Paul Oliver (ed.), ‘Approaches and Concepts’, in Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (London: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–66. 12. Robert Brown and Daniel Maudlin, ‘Concepts of Vernacular Architecture’, in The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory, ed. C. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen (London: Sage Publications, 2012), 340–55. 13. Marcel Vellinga, ‘Living Architecture: Re-imagining Vernacularity in Southeast Asia and Oceania’, Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand 30, no. 1 (March 2020): 11–24. 14. Mark Crinson, ‘Dynamic Vernacular – An Introduction’, Architecture Beyond Europe Journal 9–10 (2016); accessed through https://journals.openedition.org/abe/3002. 15. Teodoro Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People, 8th Edition (Quezon City: Garo Tech Books, 1990), 211–2 16. Thomas Hines, Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 197–216. 17. Warwick Anderson, Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Gerard Lico, ‘Building the Imperial Imagination: The Politics of American Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Manila’, (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of the Philippines, 2006). 18. Thomas Hines, ‘American Modernism in the Philippines: The Forgotten Architecture of William Parsons’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 32, no. 4 (December 1973): 316–26. 19. Daniel Burnham, ‘Report on Proposed Improvements at Manila’, in Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention of the American Institute of Architects (Washington, 1906). 20. Montgomery Schuyler, ‘Our Acquired Architecture’, Architectural Record 9, no. 3 (January 1900): 277–314. 21. Ibid., 312–13. 22. A. N. Rebori, ‘The Work of William E Parsons in the Philippine Islands, Part 1’, Architectural Record 41, no. 4 (1917): 305–24; A. N. Rebori, ‘The Work of William E Parsons in the Philippine Islands, Part 2’, Architectural Record 41, no. 5 (1917): 423–34. 23. John Snodgrass, History and Description of the Philippine General Hospital (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1912). 24. Rebori, ‘The Work of William E Parsons in the Philippine Islands, Part 1’, 313–15. 25. Ibid., 315; Fernando Zialcita and Martin Tinio, Philippine Ancestral Houses (1810–1930) (Quezon City: GCF Books, 1980); Regalado Trota Jose, Jr., Simbahan: Church Art and Architecture in Colonial Philippines, 1565–1898 (Makati: Ayala Foundation, Inc., 1991). 26. Rebori, ‘The Work of William E Parsons in the Philippine Islands, Part 2’, 433. 27. Gerard Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture and Urbanism in the Philippines (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2008), 287–97. 28. Bevis Hillier, The World of Art Deco (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1971); Bevis Hillier and Stephen Escritt, Art Deco Style (London: Phaidon, 1997)

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29. ‘The Metropolitan Theater’, Philippine Magazine 27, no. 8 (January 1932): 399, 430. 30. Edson Cabalfin, ‘Art Deco Filipino: Power, Politics and Ideology in Philippine Art Deco Architectures’ (Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2003). 31. Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino, 346–7. 32. Ibid., 323. 33. Ibid., 24–44; A. V. Hartendorp, ‘The War Damage and American Aid’, in History of Industry and Trade of the Philippines, Volume 1 (Manila: American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, Inc., 1958), 153–205; Tomas Confesor, Notes on the Post-war Reconstruction and Rehabilitation (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1945). 34. Leandro Locsin, ‘Towards a Definition of Philippine Cultural Nationalism’, Philippine Panorama (22 August 1993); Jose V. Abueva, Filipino Nationalism: Various Meanings, Constant and Changing Goals, Continuing Relevance (Quezon City: University of the Philippine Press, 1999). 35. Geronimo Manahan, ‘Vernacular Architecture and Romantic Regionalism’, in Philippine Architecture in the 20th Century, 57–78; Gerard Lico, ‘Vernacular Renaissance and the Architecture of the New Society’ in Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture and Urbanism in the Philippines, 451–93. 36. Angel Nakpil, ‘An Evaluation of Philippine Architecture’, Woman and the Home, (October 1953), 8. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Nini Yarte, ‘Angel Nakpil: Of Splendor in the Glass and Glory in the Tower’, Celebrity Magazine (15 April 1979): 6–8. 40. Paterno Alcudia, ‘Can We Develop a Native Architecture?’ Philippine Institute of Architects Journal 1, no. 4 (1966). 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Imelda Marcos, Paths to Development (Manila: National Media Production Center, 1981), 36–7 as cited in Gerard Lico, Edifice Complex: Power, Myth and Marcos State Architecture (Quezon City: Ateneo De Manila University Press, 2003), 41. 44. Leandro Locsin, ‘Nationalism and Architecture’, Philippine Panorama 22, no. 34 (23 August 1993, 10. 45. Winand Klassen, Architecture in the Philippines: Filipino Building in a Cross-Cultural Context (Cebu City: University of San Carlos Press, 1986), 195. 46. Domini Torrevillas-Suarez, ‘Leandro Locsin: He Builds for Love and Beauty’, Philippine Panorama (5 February 1978), 7. 47. ‘Seven Visionaries at the Forefront’, Asiaweek Magazine (3 September 1982), 30. 48. Ibid. 49. Francisco Mañosa, ‘What Makes Architecture, Filipino’, Architectscope (September 1992), 8; Leonor Orosa Goquinco, ‘Bobby Mañosa: The Architect Is a Nationalist’, Philippine Star (22 October 1994), D-2, D-6. 50. Philip Cu Unjieng, ‘An Afternoon with Bobby Mañosa: The Filipino Dream House’, Philippine Starweek (4 May 2003), 11. 51. Margot Baterina, ‘From the Nipa Hut Evolved the True Philippine Architecture That Tells of How Life Should Be and What a House Should Be’, Philippine Panorama (7 December 1980), 6–10, 12 52. Eric S. Caruncho, Designing Filipino: The Architecture of Francisco Mañosa (Manila: Tukod Foundation, 2003), 48–59. 53. Ibid., 42–7. 54. Ibid., 166–75. 55. Margot Baterina, ‘2,000 Coconut Trees Were Felled To Build a Spectacular House on Manila Bay That’s Fit for Kings and Queens’, Philippine Panorama Magazine (29 November 1981), 6–11.

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56. Gerard Lico, Edifice Complex: Power, Myth and Marcos State Architecture (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2003), 116–20. 57. Gerard Lico, Mañosa: Beyond Architecture (Manila: National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2018), 66–9 58. For a discussion of Isneg architecture refer to Rodrigo Perez III, Julian Dacanay and Rosario Encarnacion-Tan, Folk Architecture (Quezon City: GCF Books, 1989), 30–41. 59. Roxana Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in Southeast Asia (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1997), 7–11. 60. Sven Kirsten, Tiki Modern (Cologne, Germany: Taschen Books, 2007) 61. Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino, 445–7. 62. Souvenir Program of the Philippines International Fair (1 February to 30 April 1953, Manila) 63. Otillo Arellano, ‘Philippine Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, 1964–1965’, Philippine Architecture and Building Journal, 3, no. 2 (1961). 64. Lico, Mañosa: Beyond Architecture, 62–3. 65. Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 23. 66. Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre and Bruno Stagno (ed.), Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization (London: Wiley-Academy, 2001). 67. Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), 43–50. 68. Lito Zulueta, ‘Master Builder of the Filipino Soul’, Philipine Daily Inquirer – Sunday Inquirer, 4 August 2003. 69. Paul Memmott and John Ting, ‘Editorial: Vernacular Transformations’, Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand 30, no. 1 (March 2020): 1–10; Paul Oliver (ed.), Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (London: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Marcel Vellinga (ed.), Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, 2nd Edition (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). 70. Jiat-Hwee Chang, A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience (London: Routledge, 2016). 71. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 57. 72. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 5.

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16  From cultural symbol to societal sign: The question of the Kanak traditional house in present-day New Caledonia

  LOUIS LAGARDE AND YVES-BÉALO GONY

Introduction In southern Melanesia, the French territory of New Caledonia is comprised of one main island, called Grande Terre, and smaller islands such as Isle of Pines to the south-west, the Belep archipelago to the north-east, and the Loyalty Islands archipelago to the east. The Kanak people, traditional owners of the  land, are descendants of the Austronesian seafarers of the Lapita cultural complex, who first discovered and settled the islands of remote Oceania, some 3,000 years ago. Over the course of three millennia, through the local transformations of social systems, and probably through regional contacts with other insular communities of the greater Pacific, Kanak society1 patiently rose, deployed itself and thrived over the archipelago during the last millennium, until first European contact in 1774. Among the many cultural markers emblematic of Kanak culture is the round house (or case2, i.e. ‘hut’ as it is referred to in much of the colonial and post-colonial literature) with its conical framework, a unique feature in the Pacific.3 It is this particular, and highly symbolic, type of construction which will be the focus point of this chapter, where we intend to discuss its origins and function while considering it as the central element within a complex architectural system (both natural and created). The question of the survival of the Kanak conical roofed house, along the troubled times of the archipelago’s colonial history, its rediscovery and its present-day situation will allow us to more astutely address the relationship – be it social, ethnical or political – between the Kanak and their environment, but also to suggest new ways to address the evolution of New Caledonia’s contemporary situation. Thus, the progressive appropriation of the Kanak house and of its decoration by all components of New Caledonian society, while associated with an inevitable desacralization of the architectural feature, also allows its democratization and therefore its inclusion beyond the Kanak ethnic group to become a strong identity signal in New Caledonian society today. Our chapter will unfold in six sections. The elements of Kanak vernacular architecture, the construction sequence of the grande case (great ‘hut’ or house) and the organization of Kanak tribal space will first be put forward. Then we will address the transformations of Kanak habitat throughout the colonial period, the Kanak cultural renaissance and the present day situation of its most remarkable architectural marker.

Fundamental elements of Kanak architecture Kanak architectural knowledge is by no means restricted to the sole conical house, nor to the only use of perishable materials. A large diversity of architectural creations exist, whether devoted to power and prestige, formal reunions, everyday lodging or multiple technical activities. One should also consider as

architectural or engineering creations the irrigated terraces for the cultivation of wet taro (Colocasia esculenta), large walls diverting creek beds in order to irrigate plains and dry mounds for the cultivation of yam (Dioscorea sp.) found throughout the main island of Grande Terre. These archaeological structures are emblematic of the second millennium CE and characterize the rise of the Kanak traditional cultural complex.4 Therefore, it would be a mistake to consider Kanak traditional architectural knowledge only as a technological use of organic materials such as wood, thatch and vine – simply because these are the more visible ones – and pass on its earthy, land-connected elements. In Kanak culture, according to the proverb, ‘the clan does not possess the land, but the land possesses the clan’.5 Thus, the architecture which encapsulates the living emerges from the land, and therefore from the earth itself. The raised earth platform (or tertre in French) on which the house stands is an uprising of the land from which human life emerges. Each tertre  bears a name, and when one enunciates its genealogy, one actually recalls the successive platforms from which each diverging entity of their lineage has sprouted.6 Rather than a simple voyage in time, Kanak personal discourse on origins is therefore also – and perhaps more so – a voyage in space. Structurally, the tertre or earth platform is the link to the land. Larger examples sometimes bear added stones (for the more important round houses), creating a small stairway to the house’s entrance, and stones are also placed inside around the hearth, further connecting earthy elements to the life of the inhabitants. One must also acknowledge that the outer space acts as a meta-architecture, be it natural or even supernatural (by the choice of the site), or artificial, by the choice of planted trees, each bearing a particular function/symbolism, and acting as structural elements of space. Kanak traditional habitat is usually round, as in the large chief houses (Figure 16.1), meeting houses and simple lodging for nuclear families. This round shape seems to have appeared quite late in New Caledonia’s chronology: no evidence of such architectural forms occurs further back beyond than 1000 CE. It is therefore linked exclusively to what is referred to as the Kanak traditional cultural complex. Three decades of intensive archaeological surveys and digs throughout the archipelago have not yielded any clear definition of  anterior architectural forms: postholes and hearths uncovered and dated to the first two millennia of human presence seem rather disorganized and could testify to an exclusively non-perennial type of housing, linked with an opportunistic use of the environment.7 The round plan and conical shape of the Kanak house’s framework, being a fairly recent and local innovation/adaptation, are therefore a technical exception within Oceania, where houses are generally rectangular or capsule-shaped. The figure of the circle (or in three dimensions, that of a cylinder topped by a cone) can – at least partially – be explained by the necessity to adapt to local environmental constraints. As the population of the archipelago grew, and since one third of Grande Terre’s soil is inadequate for cultivation due to its acidity (a pH comprised between 4 and 5) and to high amounts of toxic minerals such as metals8 (nickel, chrome, cobalt, manganese and iron mainly), human installations progressively made their way to the hinterlands and higher altitudes. The main mountain range which runs from the northern tip of Grande Terre to its very south culminates at Mount Panié (1648 m) in the north and Mount Humboldt (1628 m) in the south, but has a mean altitude of 1000 m, creating lush, humid conditions ideal for crop cultivation, but also considerably colder conditions than at sea-level. Furthermore, the latitude of the archipelago being quite low, the climate is rather subtropical: much cooler than what can be found in the neighbouring archipelago of Vanuatu for instance. Therefore, it is probable that the general temperature conditions fostered the creation of interior spaces which could be heated evenly through the use of an almost central hearth. Furthermore, the recurrence of cyclones and thunderstorms during the wet season (January-April) could have guided early Kanak architects towards the creation of a round structure, which considerably reduces wind pressure. Lastly, and

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Fig. 16.1  Grandes cases (great ‘huts’) of the 1870s. ‘Hut’ of chief Gelima, Canala, by Allan Hughan, 1874. Chief ‘hut’ of the Nera tribe, Bourail, pre-1878, photographer unknown. ‘Hut’ of chief Philippe, Hienghène, by Allan Hughan, 1874. Archives de la Nouvelle-Calédonie (ANC), 168 Fi 10–22, 1 Num 3–106, and 148 Fi 10–20.

symbolically, it is said in the region of Hienghène (northeastern Grande Terre) that the round house (nga peena in Fwai language) conveys the idea of unity among the members of the group, for men sit cross-legged and in circles when they deliberate during palaver. Thus, at least the houses linked to formal activities, such as the chief houses and meeting houses, bear this round shape, the container metaphorically evoking the content. Other types of buildings should not be forgotten: for instance, non-perennial houses located in the vicinity of family crops and used during planting season (July-October), small constructions for tuber storage, secondary huts where cooking is prepared (often rectangular and open) and the large workshop huts called mwako in A’jië language (central Grande Terre). The latter have long since disappeared but consisted of a rectangular plan and a gable roof, with one of the roof planes extending beyond the central beam, thus creating a typical asymmetrical profile. Finally, elongated houses are quite frequent: they consist of a primary rectangular structure extended by a semi-circular framework at each end thus giving the overall house a capsoid shape. They are referred to as naa bwanjep or naa xaloop in Fwai language (northern Grande Terre) but are typologically similar to the fale tele or the fale afolau from Western Polynesia. They are also generally perceived as Polynesian imports during the last millennium.9

The construction of the round house As we previously mentioned, the Kanak house is invariably linked to the platform on which it stands. Thus, lineage names and platform names coincide, and one can follow the itinerary of groups through the succession of founded houses. Therefore, if the Kanak house is indeed a spectacular piece of architecture, it is actually its link to the earth platform – of which it is an above ground extension – which gives it its religious/ magic dimension. In the Hoot ma Whaap customary region,10 it is said that in the past, an assembly was

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present at the founding of a tertre: it consisted of a master of land tenure, a master of magic (sometimes called ‘sorcerer’) and of members known as ‘wisewomen’, that is, women in charge of procreation and possessing a uterine bond with the chief, and referred to as his ‘grandmothers’. In the deeper layers of the earth platform, certain magical objects were buried, in the manner of a votive foundation deposit. The house itself, with its sculpted decorations, would only come to life because of this ceremony: it is really through their connection with the earth that the sculpted pieces (doorjambs, posts, central post and its extension, the roof finial) would achieve their magical/religious dimension. The construction of a round Kanak house follows a strict order.11 Once the earth platform is put in place, a high, central, monoxylous post is erected with, at its summit, a large fibre/vine netting resembling a rattan basket. Then, the peripheral posts are driven into the ground. The larger examples (the main posts) alternate with the secondary ones on the outer rim of the earth platform. The main posts need to be driven deeply, for they will be the ones receiving the main outward-bound forces radiating from the framework. Thus the central post itself, once the house is completed, does not bear pressure anymore and could be cut above the ground.12 The support provided by the main exterior posts explains why they are sometimes adorned with figurations of masculine, bearded, entities. They parallel what is known as the ‘council of fathers and grandfathers’ (see below), who support the chief in the same way the posts support the framework emanating from the central post (the chief itself). In Kanak culture, this council of elders is a powerful assembly which bears the right to designate the chief, and its members are therefore as much providers of assistance as they are his reliable subjects. On top of the main peripheral posts lies the base purlin (known in French as panne sablière) which is not a wooden beam but rather a thick cylinder made of a bundle of large vines or reeds in which the posts’ tenons are inserted. Thus the outer palisade is consolidated. Only then may the purlin bear the weight of the rafters, which are double-pointed steeply sloping monoxylous elements, radiating from the top basket to the base purlin. Secondary purlins follow, in order to rigidify the framework, and then flexible wooden rods (or gaulettes) are strung to the framework: they will eventually receive the thatch. The species forming the thatch vary but the preferred species are mostly Indigenous and members of the Poaceae family, although in areas where this particular resource is unavailable (or when the need for housing cannot allow the necessary wait for the resource to be available), full coconut (Cocos nucifera) leaves may also be used. Bunches of dry thatch are prepared in advance, standardized to the diameter of a human wrist, and sown to the framework of the house using a particular tool, the dò (in Paîci language), a hardwood needle of particular significance.13 The walls of the house bear thatch in a continuous pattern creating homogeneity between the roof and walls (in the Loyalty islands), whereas on Grande Terre one can witness the use of Melaleuca viridiflora14 bark. In this case the lower gaulettes allowing the fixation of the Melaleuca bark stay visible and create a clear demarcation between the cylindrical structure, connected to the ground, and the superimposed conical framework, thrusting towards the sky. Once all of these elements have been put in place, the house can receive its sculpted ornamentation: jövö or doorjambs, door lintel, doorstep and decorative planks.

The organization of Kanak hamlet social space All of these general rules regarding the construction of the Kanak house have taken place – for most of the past millennium – within a particular setting known as tribu (tribe), although the term itself is a colonial concept created in 1868 after a series of dramatic incidents in Northeastern New Caledonia, in the Pouebo

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region. In reality, tribu is therefore a colonial term, corresponding roughly to what could be considered a village or hamlet, but neither of these terms is used in the vernacular French which New Caledonian citizens – of all origins and ethnicities – speak. One of the reasons behind this is of course the legacy of the colonial system which, when it created the legal existence of the ‘tribe’, also enshrined a way of life through the creation of Indigenous reserves or réserves indigènes. Moreover, the tribal entity is today recognized within the Kanak land ownership system as the smallest common denominator of socialized life. The tribe is encapsulated by the district, which in turn is encapsulated by the linguistic and customary area. Generations ago, before European contact and its sanitary aftermath, smaller entities seem to have existed in the form of disseminated familial hamlets which constituted a network called mwo daame (a ‘container of chief’ in Cèmuhi language), which could be the pre-European equivalent of the post-contact tribu15 (tribe). More specifically, in the northern part of Grande Terre, the socio-political organization is centred on a specific group which exercises power. Vernacular perception of space excludes buffer zones, extending from border to border, leaving no land unrelated to people. Location of groups is calculated according to their importance (i.e. their customary role) and for instance, satellite groups are implanted in the periphery of the influence zone, and in accordance to their function and to their demographic value. The Kanak hamlets or larger villages observed by the first Europeans or the ones which have recently been surveyed through archaeological fieldwork, show both recurring and distinctive features, the latter being mostly associated to the environmental characteristics of the chosen site. In all cases, one can witness a deliberate and judicious installation of the earth platforms, in the vicinity of fresh water and horticultural terraces, and of important (super)natural features such as important mountains or cliffs.16 The dominant feature of the Kanak hamlet is its central alley. One can for instance see its importance through its presence on Kanak carved bamboo, an ancient art form which became increasingly popular17 during the second half of the nineteenth century. A large round house is featured on each end of the alley, while sacred trees are figured on each side of it.18 This central alley and its variations are what defines the Kanak socio-political landscape (Figure 16.2). In the region between Canala and Ponérihouen (central Grande Terre), at the highest end of the alley is the larger earth platform, which supports the house of the grand aîné (great elder), which is the recurring denomination of the chief in Kanak languages. At the lower end is another house (not quite as large) for the younger of the chiefly bloodline (or poindi). This second house is also for visitors and guests, inside which exchange networks can be revived and perpetuated. Therefore, in this central region of New Caledonia, the alley completes the role of the built architecture: thanks to this hollow space, the chief house where elders join together and the poindi house where outsiders arrive and stay are linked. The alley thus bears a generating function, it properly ‘gives life’, as one says in Houaïlou19 (central Grande Terre). However, these two large houses facing each other do not constitute a rule for the New Caledonian archipelago.20 For instance, from Ponérihouen to the Belep islands in the North, the central alley exists, but with only one large house (for the chief) at the higher end of it. The alley therefore becomes an open space, dedicated to exchanges and ceremonies. Here, the chief’s house (or nga xaiuk) becomes a portal, or a barrier between what is ‘in front of it’, that is, what lives and thrives through the process of exchange, represented by the alley, and what lies ‘behind it’, that is, the home of spirits, the forest, the freshwater springs and the burial places. Of course, the Christianization of minds and space,21 the missionary-guided creation of cemeteries have irreversibly shattered this vision of Kanak habitat. Furthermore, French rule in New Caledonia implemented Kanak reserves with fixed limits and very restricted access to visitors: thus, by disrupting traditional exchanges, it also progressively destroyed the meaning of the central alley.

From Kanak Cultural Symbol to Societal Sign 285

Fig. 16.2  Contemporary chief’s house in Sarraméa, central south Grande Terre. © Anne Chopin.

Transformations in tribal habitat throughout the twentieth century The first drastic modifications of traditional Kanak housing were the work of missionaries. The Christianization of the New Caledonian archipelago started in 1842 in the Loyalty Islands with emissaries of the London Missionary Society (LMS), and one year later on Grande Terre with French Catholic missionaries of the Société de Marie.22 For the Protestants, the first LMS teachers (who came from Polynesia, such as Fao, Tanielo and Tataio, still celebrated today) did not transform much of the traditional architecture.23 It is only when European missionaries became stationed on the islands such as missionaries Samuel MacFarlane (a trained engineer), and later James Hadfield (a cabinet-maker) and his wife Emma (a pioneering anthropologist), that European-style housing became of influence on family space. The house of God progressively became the centre of newly created villages, with converted families willing to stay in the vicinity of the eika, or temple. The word itself, derived from the English expression ‘acre of God’, says a lot about the Kanak understanding of the link between land and house, which we have already discussed. For the Catholics, the establishment of the Catholic pro-vicariate of Melanesia in Saint-Louis (southern mainland New Caledonia), in the vicinity of capital city Noumea, acted as an important spatial and religious marker for newly converted Kanak populations, attracting and concentrating them on ‘missions’ organized

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according to the model of Jesuit ‘reductions’ as found in Paraguay.24 There, in the enclosure of the mission, houses were constructed on new models, while still using traditional know-how and material. Houses became rectangular and windows appeared, as well as short verandas, while wooden framework and thatch remained tied to the framework and walls in a traditional manner. These syncretic features, however, were not common, and the majority of Kanak traditional architecture as witnessed by late nineteenth-century photographers is still very much represented by the large houses and wide central alleys, with Christianization only progressing slowly on Grande Terre. The arrival of French colonial rule in 1853 and the progressive nomination of certain chiefs paved the way for the creation, by the colonial administration, of the first official residences for Kanak customary leaders: they mostly consist of  rectangular houses, with pisé (sometimes masonry) walls and simply debarked posts, thatch roofs, verandahs, like that of chief Samuel Vendegou on Isle of Pines, and are actually quite similar to the houses of New Caledonia’s first French settlers. However, round houses stayed the norm until the 1930s, even if the military repression of the major Kanak upheavals of 1878 and 1917 had resulted in the massive destruction of hundreds, if not thousands of houses. In the late 1920s, the arrival of administrator Joseph Guyon (1870–1942) resulted in a drastic policy of modernization: new roads, electricity for the capital city Noumea, are but a few tokens of his work as Governor between 1925 and 1932. He was also concerned with the general health of the Kanak population and wished to modernize tribal life, and eventually for Kanaks to ‘assimilate’ (in his own words) a European way of life. Of course, Guyon’s vision was the epitome of colonial paternalism and benevolence, itself emblematic of the interwar period. The consequences were the destruction of round houses and the Kanaks being forced to live in ‘hygienic villages’ made of rectangular pisé houses with thatch roofs. Outdoor kitchens and raised floors prevented the presence of hearths in the houses, prompting the replacement of thatch by corrugated iron sheets. Indeed, thatch can be preserved over long periods by the constant production of smoke, which slows down insect infestation.25 The discarding of fire within the house led to the need for more frequent replacements of thatch, which in turn became more and more scarce due to the growing of extensive cattle-breeding properties owned by colonists. Thus, with the construction of pisé or lime and masonry bungalows, tribal housing became increasingly similar to the lodging of settler families of one or two generations earlier. Today, examples of Kanak pisé houses are quite rare and should be considered through the prism of heritage (although this is not the focus of this chapter), just as pisé settler houses can be. The same could be said for lime masonry houses in the Loyalty islands or Isle of Pines, which were constructed under the influence of missionaries. They form a distinct family of syncretic elements which, for some decades, have kept the Kanaks away from the round house form. Since the late twentieth century, round houses have made a dramatic comeback in tribal villages as they form a symbol of identity and empowerment.

The round house: A symbol of Kanak cultural renaissance The post-Second World War era saw the dismantling of colonial empires. The French colonies of Indochina became Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1955, and most of the French African colonial domain gained independence in 1958 through the refusal of the application of the 5th Republic constitution. In 1962, even Algeria, France’s most cherished and main settlement colony, became independent. In the Pacific however, the colonies of French Polynesia, Wallis-and-Futuna and New Caledonia chose to remain within the French Republic and became ‘territoires d’outre-mer’, or overseas territories. A decolonizing agenda was still at play in the region, with Samoa gaining independence in 1962, Tonga and Fiji in 1970, Papua New Guinea in 1975. That very same year (1975), between September 3 and 7, a major cultural festival in Noumea

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Fig. 16.3  Left: Jean-Marie Tjibaou officially opens Melanesia 2000 in Nouméa, september 1975. Right: the large houses constructed for the festival are visible in the background. Photographs courtesy of the ADCK-Centre culturel Tjibaou.

called ‘Melanesia 2000’ was held, under the authority of charismatic Kanak activist Jean-Marie Tjibaou (figure 16.3). ‘Melanesia 2000’ was a major wake-up call for the Kanaks, but also for the other components of New Caledonia’s society. Descendants of French convicts, newly arrived Europeans, other descendants of the colonial labour system (of Vietnamese, Indonesian, Japanese, Polynesian and ni-Vanuatu origins) came to realize that Kanak culture was alive, that it was noteworthy, significant, majestic and undeniable.26 JeanMarie Tjibaou, along with co-organizers Jacques Iekawé, Philippe Missotte, Gilbert Barillotte and Georges Dobbelaere, had thought of the festival in a ‘Pacific way’.27 The four days of celebration were in fact the end of a year-long process of cultural awakening, during which mini-festivals were held in order to revive and strengthen long lost customary bonds between all members of the Kanak community. The final celebration in Noumea gathered 2,000 participants in front of 50,000 spectators of all origins. The construction of large traditional conical houses was an important feature of the exterior decor for the festival but of course, because of the Kanak house’s cultural significance, it was also a way for the Kanak community to re-enter the city of Noumea, by reclaiming a long lost relationship with the land. It is no coincidence that the Tjibaou Cultural Centre today and its alley of modernized house structures created by Renzo Piano and built in the mid-1990s are located almost exactly where the ‘Melanesia 2000’ festival was held twenty years earlier.28 Throughout the 1980s, with the creation of the Kanak cultural, scientific and technical Department (Office culturel scientifique et technique canaque or OCSTC) which later became the Kanak cultural development agency (Agence de développement de la culture kanak or ADCK), a fight against time was undertaken. Thousands of interviews with elders were made in order to preserve the remnants of traditional knowledge which had been shattered by over a century of both missionary influence and colonial pressure. In parallel, the 1980s decade saw some troubled political times – and near civil war – known locally as Les Événements, where the central question of independence from France divided the archipelago in two opposing blocks. In rural areas, and particularly on the east coast of Grande Terre, where European presence had always been quite small (demographically speaking) but quite oppressive (in terms of land occupation), large redistributions of traditional land were obtained in favour of the Kanak traditional owners. Thus, in this decade and also through the 1990s, the revival of the conical house was very important for the Kanak community, as a symbol both of Kanak cultural renaissance and that of a progressive repossession of the country.29

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Lastly, and because of the general reappraisal of Kanak culture, the Kanak house has progressively entered public place. Once restricted to cultural institutions such as museums and other heritage-focused centres, the presence of the Kanak house was generalized throughout the archipelago as a feature of the country’s idea of a ‘shared destiny’. The metaphor of the great house as the image of a future, decolonized New Caledonia still stands, with the Kanak communities being the outer posts of the house and welcoming visitors who pay their respects by bowing respectfully before entering the house. Thus, conical houses have flourished on such diverse areas as the roundabout facing the premises of the North Province Assembly (Koné village) or at the entry of the vast public domain of Deva, in the South Province near Bourail, an area of shared and concerted development between local communities and public services.

Present-day situation of the Kanak house In turn, this public use of the Kanak house has progressively paved the way for a certain folklorization of a construction of great cultural significance. The pushed development of tourism, on an archipelago in which the economy is largely dominated by mining, led to the creation of bungalows in the shape of conical houses such as the Sheraton Deva resort. In the Loyalty Islands, where lodging for tourists is largely provided on a small scale and in family owned businesses, small conical houses provide much of the accommodation available. This, along with the construction of Kanak houses for the public domain which we just discussed, generated companies specialized in the construction of conical houses in a traditional way. Therefore, a shift was observed progressively between a traditional and cultural activity involving a specific group, to a commercial activity, not necessarily restricted to Kanak specialists. Progressively, conical housess have flourished at the back of modern ones, even outside the boundaries of customary land. This process is not unheard of in the broader Pacific: in Tahiti, different types of fare (‘house’ in Tahitian, and by extension any type of traditional thatch roof construction) can be built in the vicinity of a main house or public building, such as a fare pote’e for instance, where meetings are held or meals served on special occasions. From the 1880s to the 1930s in New Zealand, pakeha settlers did sometimes build a Maori house in their own backyards.30 However, the New Zealand case consisted mostly in the (re)creation of picturesque garden follies, and their owners often disregarded Maori traditional norms. In the more modern Tahitian and New Caledonian cases, the practical/utilitarian use of the Tahitian fare or the Kanak case is privileged and the magical ornamentation of the building is absent, in order not to invoke the spirits. One could perceive this as a capitalist take on Kanak culture and as some form of cultural appropriation by other components of New Caledonian society. However, one must not forget the important level of mixing between communities living on the archipelago today. As years go by, the New Caledonian cultural mosaic tends to uniformize more and more.31 Therefore, where outside observers may consider the use of the Kanak house by other local communities as cultural appropriation, we suggest that it might in fact correspond to a biased perspective based on the idea that communities in New Caledonia are still highly segregated and separated. We suggest a more complex approach, where the Kanak house has progressively become a beloved feature, extending to other communities, as if some of their members have now accepted the future country metaphor. One might also argue that Kanak conical houses, which once reflourished during the early 1980s cultural renaissance and activism, are now quite rare on Grande Terre. The vast majority of conical houses are visible on the Loyalty Islands, where their construction is not only encouraged but compulsory for residents. The Loyalty islands province, comprising Ouvéa, Lifou, Tiga and Maré, has since 1992 required from customary residents that they each build a traditional house on the land they have been assigned, a

From Kanak Cultural Symbol to Societal Sign 289

Fig. 16.4  Different interpretations on Kanak vernacular architecture are visible at the Tjibaou Cultural Centre. © Anne Chopin.

prerequisite to obtaining provincial financial aid for the construction of a modern, concrete house32 Island populations may live in a more modern structure, but are therefore, and nonetheless, required to construct a conical house. With the pristine environment and beautiful white beaches of the Loyalty Islands, the vision of traditional houses in villages is indeed a glorious one for tourists, and ever since this decision was taken more than thirty years ago, it has never been questioned. On Grande Terre however, chiefdoms are organized in a very different manner. Loyalty Islands chiefdoms somewhat echo more pyramidal social structures, which anthropologists more or less agree to see as a sign of Polynesian influences in the past centuries. On Grande Terre, while powerful, pre-European social structures exist, most traditional means of power were shattered and redistributed through the colonial administration, as we previously discussed. This state of affairs, combined with a different, less pyramidal and more horizontal social structure, has not led to any sort of customary decision to force or ensure the construction of traditional houses. Therefore, Kanak houses have become increasingly rare in tribal villages, and the visitor might be quite surprised to visit a ‘tribe’ where most houses are modern, made of concrete and with corrugated iron sheet roofing. Again, the tourist industry has allowed some of the houses to survive, for visitors are eager to spend the night in a traditional house for the sake of the experience.

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In this manner, conical houses, whether built on customary land, private land or the public domain, now share, albeit partially, some folkloric aspect. From a fundamental Kanak symbol which encompasses many elements of traditional society, it is more and more perceived as a New Caledonian, integrated, sign or signal of identity, at the expense of the loss of knowledge and understanding of its links to humans and space.

Conclusion Kanak architectural knowledge forms an integrated part of New Caledonia’s cultural heritage, rooted in the environment from which it stems, in the soil in which it is implanted, and in a deep historical sequence spanning at least a full millennium. However, due to our archipelago’s recent colonial past, it very nearly vanished. From missionary influence supplying alternative house forms, to colonial benevolence resulting in forced transformations of vernacular housing, the once emblematic Kanak conical house was almost forgotten in the interwar and early post-Second World War periods. The global anticolonial and cultural renaissance movements of the 1960s progressively had an impact in the Pacific, and thus, through an introspective rediscovery, somewhere between an auto-ethnography and experimental archaeology programme, the means, techniques and know-how related to the grande case, the large house, were revitalized and saved. In the early twenty-first century however, although it may seem that the knowledge has been revived, we have entered a new phase of relation with the Kanak house. It is clear that it has gained in dimension over time, growing from a powerful yet localized symbol to a metaphor for our whole country. The Kanak traditional house has also, at the expense of a certain folklorization, become a central component of the identity bond uniting all communities. As an architectural structure conceived to bind the earth and what stems from it, the dead and the living, the past and the present, the Indigenous and the exogenous, there may be no better image than the Kanak traditional house to model our future society. This explains the presence of the Kanak house’s roof finial on the flag which since 2007 floats alongside the French national emblem on public buildings, but also the presence of the Kanak house on local coins and banknotes. However, while it is used as a political metaphor for our future, the Kanak house or its modern derivatives are also trivially rented to tourists. This unique feature in Oceania therefore faces new challenges, and no one can say if this remarkable piece of vernacular architecture will eventually become devoid of meaning for generations to come, or if it will continue to epitomize the meaning of society (Figure 16.4), which it has done for as long as oral accounts can testify.

Notes 1. Although it is not uncommon to use the plural form when addressing the distant Kanak past, thus speaking of Kanak societies, rather than a monolithic cultural complex. 2. Case in French is an ambiguous term, meaning both bungalow and hut. While it may be seen as belittling, it must be noted that in New Caledonia, people take pride in the use of the term case and do not refer to the Kanak traditional round house in any other manner when speaking French (and certainly do not use maison, i.e. house). In a way, this appropriation of a belittling term is a similar process to that of the word Kanak, which has progressively moved on from an insult to become the adequate, official designation of the archipelago’s Indigenous people through their political activism. 3. To the exception, perhaps, of some rare Maori houses. See William J. Philipps, Maori Houses and Food Stores (Wellington: Government Printer, 1952), Dominion Museum Monograph 8, 65–6.

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4. The expression has become a norm in New Caledonia’s pre-European chronology. See Christophe Sand, Jacques Bolé and André Ouetcho, ‘L’ensemble culturel traditionnel kanak’, in Atlas de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, ed. Jacques Bonvallot, Jean-Christophe Gay and Elisabeth Habert (Marseille: IRD Press, 2013), 103–6. 5. Many versions of this adage exist, a popular one being African (among Âgni populations, Ivory Coast). However, it is also commonly used in New Caledonia. To explore this complex relationship with the land, see Alain Saussol, L’héritage: essai sur le problème foncier mélanésien en Nouvelle-Calédonie (Paris: Société des Océanistes, 1979), 33–8 in particular. 6. As exemplified by Jean Guiart’s pioneering work on Kanak chiefdoms. See Jean Guiart, Structures de la chefferie en Mélanésie du Sud (Paris: Institut d’ethnologie, 1963). Early missionary and ethnographer Maurice Leenhardt wrote that a Kanak individual’s civil status is « inscribed in the ground ». Maurice Leenhardt, Gens de la Grande Terre (Paris: NRF-Gallimard, 1947), 27. 7. For instance, the analysis of postholes and hearths found in large excavations of the Deva domain (2011–12), while shedding light on the chronology and resources available for past populations, has remained inconclusive in regard of house forms and occupation patterns. See Christophe Sand, David Baret, Jacques Bolé, Stéphanie Domergue, André Ouetcho and Jean-Marie Wadrawane, ‘From Test-pit to Big Scale Archaeology in New Caledonia, Southern Melanesia’, in Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current Approaches to Landscape, Exchange and Practice, ed. Mathieu Leclerc and James Flexner, Terra Australis 51 (Canberra: ANU press, 2019), 53–66. 8. For a detailed account on the poor quality of lateritic soils in New Caledonia, see Tanguy Jaffré, Laurent L’Huillier and Adrien Wulff, Mines et environnement en Nouvelle-Calédonie: les milieux sur substrats ultramafiques et leur restauration (Noumea: Institut Agronomique Calédonien, 2010). 9. Contacts between Melanesia and Western Polynesia were frequent during the last millennium, a period which saw the human settlement of the Polynesian triangle (Aotearoa, Rapa nui and Hawai’i), but was also marked with a drastic increase of Polynesian voyages in the southwestern Pacific. For New Caledonia specifically, see Louis Lagarde, ‘L’Île des Pins (Nouvelle-Calédonie) et ses relations avec la Polynésie: données archéologiques et particularités stylistiques’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes 144–145 (2017): 253–68. 10. Eight customary regions constitute present-day New Caledonia, and all are represented within the Customary Senate. From North to South, they are Hoot ma Whaap, Paîci-Cèmuhi, Ajië-Arhö, Xaracûu, Drubea-Kapume, and in the Loyalty islands Iaai, Drehu and Nengone. 11. The main analytic work on the construction of the Kanak house still is Roger Boulay, La maison kanak (Marseille: ADCK-Parenthèses, 1990). 12. In some present day, more folkloric constructions, such as in hotel lobbies, this is often the case. Metaphorically, if we pursue the chief/central post adequation, it is easy to understand that as the central post need not be connected to the ground, the chief can be a foreigner. This explains why, in New Caledonia but also more broadly in Oceania, chiefdoms are often offered to incoming voyagers. In Polynesia, unions are celebrated between future chiefs, that is, incoming navigators worshipping Ta’aroa, god of the high seas and women of the local bloodline, devoted to Tāne, god of the forest and interior. See Steven Hooper, Polynésie: Arts et Divinités, 1760–1860 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2008). 13. The extremity of the needle is often sculpted with a set of geometrical motifs forming what is known as a ‘nœud d’interdit’, indicating taboo or restricted use. See Roger Boulay, ‘La sculpture faîtière de la grande case: archétypes, styles régionaux ou variations?’, in Kanak: l’art est une parole, ed. Roger Boulay and Emmanuel Kasarhérou (Paris-Arles: Musée du Quai Branly-Actes Sud, 2013), 100–18. 14. Indigenous to New Caledonia and Australia, where it is also known as ‘paperbark tree’. 15. Despite the destructuration/restructuration of Kanak society during colonial times, certain ancient political systems have remained active, and particularly the dual systems created by confronting yet interrelated

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chiefdoms. Linked by kinship, these influential lineages perpetuate their authority by the continuous consultation of one another each time the decisions at stake could have a potential impact on a territory larger than theirs. Such are the dual chiefdoms of Goa and Bwarhat, and also Bayes and Doui in northeastern Grande Terre. 16. Natural features are known to be of high importance. Certain mountains, as locations where spirits live and thrive, where springs and life emerge, are regarded as sacred sites. Cliffs and caves are also important because they can hide funerary deposits. See Emmanuel Tjibaou, ‘Les montagnes et les reliefs’, in Le patrimoine de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, ed. Louis Lagarde (Paris-Le François: HC éditions-Fondation Clément, 2020), 506–9. 17. Based on an ancient artform, Kanak engravers of the latter part of the nineteenth century created innovative works of art, quite popular among European travellers. The engravings show details of traditional life but also many aspects of European influence, such as horses, dogs, colonial bungalows, firearms, uniforms and women’s clothes. See for instance Roger Boulay Le bambou gravé kanak (Paris: Parenthèses-ADCK, 1993); Roberta Colombo-Dougoud, Bambous kanak: une passion de Marguerite Lobsiger-Dellenbach (Gollion-Genève: InfollioMusée d’ethnographie de Genève, 2010). 18. These trees are recurring species: the Araucaria pine, a masculine symbol, relates also to the male chief. The kaori (kauri, Agathis sp.) relates to the human group, and the coconut (Cocos nucifera) is a feminine symbol. 19. Boulay, La maison kanak, 47. 20. This is very similar to the fact that, due to colonial rule and the blind application of a chosen tribal system to the whole of the archipelago, the traditional spatial organization and land tenure systems (deeply rooted in the past) do not mirror all the newly created socio-political systems. 21. The Christianization of Grande Terre was mainly the work of Catholic missionaries from the Société de Marie (or marist friars). Along with changes in faith came a Christianization of landscape, with the installation of calvaries, and of course grottoes dedicated to Virgin Mary. Caves which were already regarded as sacred or tapu thus received a supplementary layer of sacrality. 22. On The Matter, See Kerry R. Howe, The Loyalty Islands: A History of Culture Contacts (Canberra: ANU Press, 1977) and Georges Delbos, L’église catholique en Nouvelle-Calédonie (Paris: Desclée, 1993). 23. On the Loyalty Islands, it seems that the population was once scattered in groups descending from a common mythical ancestor. The arrival of the Gospel in the 1840s triggered a recomposition of cultural landscape, through the aggregation of converts in the vicinity of the temples and churches, which led to the creation of contemporary chiefdoms and districts. Contradictions between the Protestant and the Catholic faiths were used by the then emerging chiefdoms and clans: persistent ancient rivalries were merged to the dissonances in Christian discourse, resulting in tensions and warfare. Thus, chiefly space in the Loyalty islands is mostly surrounded by palisades and no alley is visible, as a trace of these ancient customary rivalries. 24. Roman Catholic missionaries on Grande Terre wished to reproduce models which had functioned rather well in South America. The mission of Saint-Louis, in Southern Grande Terre, follows the rather strict Jesuit reduction organization model, comprising a central cluster of both religious and utilitary buildings, surrounded by large agropastoral domains. Father Rougeyron, in charge of the Catholic Church in New Caledonia between 1853 and 1874, extended this model on most locations of Grande Terre. He often mentioned Paraguayan reduction as inspiration in his correspondence. See Dominique Barbe, ‘Le Catholicisme’, in Le patrimoine de la NouvelleCalédonie, ed. Louis Lagarde (Paris-Le François: HC éditions-Fondation Clément, 2020), 540–3. 25. See Alain Saussol, ‘De la case ronde à la case rectangulaire’, in Boulay, La maison kanak, 119–24. 26. Jean-Marie Tjibaou wrote about the necessity of recognition of Kanak culture: L’homme qui n’a pas de culture est comme un coco qui tombe dans la mer. Il erre, stérile, au gré des océans, balloté de rivages en rivages. […]C’est elle [la culture autochtone], en effet, parcequ’autochtone, qui peut donner à la culture du pays la « coloration et la senteur » du terroir calédonien. Mais, pour exister pleinement, la culture, comme le monde canaque tout court, a fondamentalement besoin (c’est vital) de cette reconnaissance du monde ambiant. La

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non-reconnaissance qui crée l’insignifiance et l’absence de dialogue culturel ne peut qu’amener au suicide ou à la révolte. Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Vers Melanesia 2000 (Nouméa: Graphical), unpaginated. A man without culture is like a coconut at sea. He wanders, sterile, on the high seas or from shore to shore. Only the Indigenous culture, because of its indigeneity, can provide a nation’s culture with the « coloration and fragrance » of the New Caledonian country. However, to fully exist, culture, as the Kanak world, urgently, vitally, needs recognition from the ambient world. The refusal to acknowledge it creates insignificance, and the absence of cultural dialogue can only lead to suicide or upheaval. (authors’ translation). 27. The expression ‘Pacific way’ was created by Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, then Prime Minister of Fiji, and coined at the United Nations in 1970. He suggested the existence of a way of doing things specific to the Pacific, through ‘preparedness to negotiate, flexibility, adaptation and compromise’. Here we wish to emphasize the fact that prior to Melanesia 2000, mini-festivals, considerable discussion, circulation of speech and ideas were at play through traditional networks, in order to attain a general consensus and make the final festival of September 1975 a success. 28. See Alban Bensa, Ethnologie et Architecture: le centre culturel Tjibaou, une réalisation de Renzo Piano (Paris: Adam Biro, 2000). 29. Here, the reconstruction of houses included the refounding of the earth platforms, a process which boosted the reclaiming of traditional land. Long lost patronyms were revived and reattributed, since new platforms could be established. 30. See Roger Neich, ‘The Māori House Down in the Garden: A Benign Colonialist Response to Māori Art and the Māori Counter-response’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 112, no. 4 (2003): 331–68. 31. Christiane Terrier, ‘Calédoniens ou métis ?’, in La Nouvelle-Calédonie, terre de métissages ?, ed. Frédéric Angleviel (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004), 66–74. 32. The legal reference can be found here: Journal officiel de la Nouvelle-Calédonie (1992), 1124: ‘ Délibération n° 92–03/API du 20 février 1992 relative à la politique d’habitat social de la Province des îles Loyauté’.

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Index Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Panel (ATSIHP) 110, 130 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 105–9. See also Indigenous architecture adat community 93 Adishakti, Laretna T. 95 Aelon̄ Kein Ad (The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI)). See The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) Agyeman, Julian 230 Ah Mouy, Louis 204 aid funding project 21–4. See also Pacific architecture Alcudia, Paterno 270–1 Alian, Sanaz 215 Alice Springs town camps 110–11 Alienated Land Tenure 154 American colonialism and architecture 14, 266–70, 276 American style homes, imported housing 135–47 Anderson, Benedict 265 Ansell, Shaun 124 Antonio, Pablo 269 Antonisse, J. H. 177 Aotearoa (New Zealand) Covid-19 lockdown 36 European people, migration of 52–4 hybridity in design 58, 234, 238 Pacific peoples in 55–6 Polynesian migration to 49–50 raupō (reed) house 51–2 role of vernacular 50 state house 54–5 Treaty of Waitangi (Te tiriti o Waitangi) 49 Appadurai, Arjun 235 architectural design practice. See also traditional architecture American colonialism and 266–9 architectural elements 1, 6 Austronesian migration and 5–6 creolization 65–6, 72, 80 (see also creole architecture) in cultural identity 153 double cottage 71–2

environmental and cultural changes impact on 2–3 linguistic analysis 9, 65–6 and nationalism 265–6 new forms of 2 and Pacific Island cultures 6 Philippine national identity 266 policy requirements 7 post-colonialism and 269–74 transdisciplinary approach to 9 Architecture in Australia (Freeland) 198 Arellano, Juan 269, 273 Argyle Cottage 198 arid zone wiltja 107 Arnhem Land 118–19 community-led building partnerships 119–20, 128–9 Kabulwarnamyo 121–4 Maningrida residents 124–6, 128–9 Mount Catt community 126–8 self-reliant construction 126–8 traditional technologies 120 vernacular architecture on 119, 129–30 Aroya, Javier 126 Art Deco architecture 180, 269 Asian Development Bank (ADB) 22, 23 The Asian Touch in Building (Lewis) 198 Asia Pacific region cane sugar plantation enterprise 178 colonial agricultural trading 175, 177–82 ethnic separation 179 Gothic and Art Deco styles 180 plantation estates and agricultural sites 183–8 shipping companies 175–7 transmission of architectural forms 175 Asquith, Lindsay 58 Assembling the Centre: Architecture for Indigenous Cultures – Australia and Beyond (McGaw and Pieris) 2 Austin, Mike 234 Australasia and Oceania and cultural identity 231–2 diversity 15, 153

house types and building technologies in 3 influences on architectural forms 7 vernacular architecture of 1–2, 15 Australian Aboriginal architecture 2. See also Indigenous architecture Australian Aid (AusAid/DFAT) 22–3 Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) 22 Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) 157 Austronesian architecture 5 cultural landscape 179 house elements 6 and Southeast Asian cultures 219, 273 stone architectural technologies 6 Aygen, Zeynep 254 Balabbala 121–4, 128–9 bamboo house project 273 Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation 119–20, 124–6 Beechey, Frederick 71 Bell, Peter 181–2 Belshaw, Cyril 161 Berman, Marshall 165 Bhabha, Homi, K. 8, 21 Bhutanese/Nepalese community 223–4 bough shades 107–9, 112 Braiding Sweetgrass (Kimmerer) 135 Brunswick and Coburg, Melbourne 220–3 building materials, procurement process 26–9 built environments and Australia’s self-identification 213–14, 225–7. See also Melbourne commercial built environments Built in Niugini: Construction in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Sillitoe) 2 bungalow 180–1 Burnham, Daniel 267, 276 Burns, Philp & Co, Limited shipping company 176–8 Busse, Mark 153–4 Cahyono, U. J. 89–90 Cairns, Stephen 180 Capitol Theater 268–9, 277 Capiz-shell/louvered window systems 267 Caribbean creole architecture 68, 72–3 Catholics, Kanak populations 286–7 Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) 120–1 Chatterjee, Partha 277 China Aid 22–3 Chinese Architecture in the Straits Settlements and Western Malaya (Kohl) 198–9 Chinese carpenters 12, 193–202 in Southeast Asia 202–6 Chợ Bến Thành (Bến Thành market) building 216–17

296 Index

churchscape 14, 248 CICC modifications 253–5 conservation of 255–8 Matavera churchscape 250–1 modernization 252–3 Rarotonga’s historical context 249–50 Citroen, Cosman 177 client consultation process 8 climate change adaptation 135–6. See also The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) building materials 143–7 building strategies 141–3 decolonization of 134–5, 149–50 environmental responsiveness 143 Indigenous Pacific peoples 230 in situ adaptation 137–8 migration 136, 148–9 Oceanic nations 230 resilience mechanism to 136 vernacular housing typologies 138–40, 147–8 climate change migration 13, 134–6, 148–9 as adaptation 233–4 cultural integrity 230 design practices 234–5 Fijian (see Fijian migrants) human rights 234 risks and landscape practices 232 vernacular landscape and cultural identity 231–2, 234 Coconut Palace 273–4 Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research 130 Collingwood cottages 197–203 Collmann, Jeff 110 colonial agricultural trade connectivity and labour movement 175, 177–82 Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (Young) 67 Colonial Georgian architecture 69–70 community-driven building partnerships 10–11, 119–20, 126–9 Connell, John 154 Cook Islands Christian Church (CICC) 248 churchscape modifications 252–3 collective identity and nation-building 253–5 Cultural and Historic Places Act 256 cultural landscapes approach 258–9 Indigenization of 254 mana, reaffirmation of 250 membership of 257 Cotabato Municipal Hall 273–4 Coté, Joost 177 Cox, Philip 184

Cramer, B. J. 177 creole architecture 67–8, 80 Caribbean 68, 72–3 creative inventiveness 77 pidgin architecture 69, 72 creolistics 65, 80. See also linguistic creolization ‘Creolization and Its Discontents’ (Palmié) 67 Crinson, Mark 266 Cronin, Kathryn 179 cross-cultural communication 25 cross-cultural design 22, 24, 26, 29 Cultural and Historic Places Act 256 Cultural Centre of the Philippines Complex 271–3 cultural values/response 1, 13, 50 Cook Islanders 258–9 Fijian community 38 Javanese traditional culture 89 Customary land tenure 154 Dark Emu (Pascoe) 181 Davis, Howard 153, 155 Devine-Wright, Patrick 230 The Diagnosis of Prefabricated Building (Lewis) 199 diasporic vernacularization 12–13, 213–14. See also Melbourne commercial built environments dismantled buildings and wooden elements 90–1 Djarrit-Uliga-Delap (the DUD) 137 environmental responsiveness 143 Dobkins, Wally 111 domestic relocation 233 double cottage 71–2 drifting architecture 183–8 Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy (Cairns ed.) 180 dual land tenure system 154 Durie, Mason 42 Earl, George Windsor 181 earthquake construction 35, 38, 91, 95, 271 economic crisis, Indonesia 96 Edwards, Jay 68, 80 employment 27 Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architectures of the World (Oliver) 119 environmental adaptation strategies 143, 148. See also climate change adaptation Erdland, A. 143 Eugenio Lopez Mansion 269 European-style buildings 156–7, 254, 286 Evans’ Style house 65, 73–80 Farbotko, Carol 234 Far Eastern University Main Building 269 Farkhan, A. 89–90

Fijian migrants 13, 233 adaptation policy 233 cultivation practices in 231 cultural practices 238 design process 235–7, 242 A Fijian Story Space design 238 The Food Co-op Garden design 238 interpretations of Vanua 231–2 Kilbirnie design proposals 238 The Lovo Hut design 239 A New Home in the Pacific design 240 New Zealand 233–4 spatial propositions 237–8, 242 traditional (mataqali) land ownership system 232 Filipino architecture 14, 269–71, 273, 276 Finau, Sitaleki A. 56 Fisher, Deborah 111 Folger, Mayhew 71–2 The Food Co-op Garden design concept 238 Ford, Murray R. 136, 137, 149 Freeland, John 180 Fua‘amotu International Airport 27–31 Fujian’s vernacular architecture 206–7 funding for projects. See aid funding project garages 55–7 Geertz, Clifford 98 Gellner, Ernest 265, 277 geometrical patterns 30 Georgian architecture 9 Georgiana’s Journal (McCrae) 197–8 Gerke, Solvay 92 Gilroy, Paul 21 Givón, Talmy 69 Golson, Jack 158 Gothic and Art Deco styles 180 The Great Derangement (Ghosh) 235 Griggs, Peter 178 Gunyah Goondie + Wurley (Memmott) 2 Guyon, Joseph 287 Haar, Paul 120, 126–8 The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (Grant, Greenop, Refiti and Glenn) 2 Hemisphere magazine 198 Heppell, Michael 111 hip-roofed cottage 75 homelands, Indigenous 117–18 Arnhem Land’s homelands 118–20 Balabbala 121–4, 128–9 funding allowances 119 Kabulwarnamyo 121–4 land management organization partnership 121–9

Index 297

Maningrida 124–6 materials in homeland building 129–30 technologies 120–1 vernacular architecture 119–20 Homelands movement 117–18 Homeowners Handbook programme 137, 148 Hoot ma Whaap customary region 283–4 Hoskins, Rau 58 The House in South-east Asia (Dumarcay) 199 housing transformation processes 153 hunter-gatherer shelter type 4–5, 106, 110 Hunt, Walter 187 hybridization 58, 68 of architectural languages 68–9 civic buildings 267 Indigenous-colonial buildings 177 Varman’s interpretations 74–5 imported housing 135–47 Indigenous architecture 2. See also Māori Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT) (ALRA) 118–19 behaviour settings 235, 238 bough shades 107–9, 112 Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) 120–1 climate change adaptation strategies 134–5 community-driven approaches 10–11 conventional housing 109–10 cultural tradition 9 design and planning processes 11 homelands (see Homelands, Indigenous) house designs 10 huts and cottages 108 hybrid Indigenous-colonial buildings 177 in-built windbreaks 110–13 Iredale Pedersen Hook (IPH) 111–12 NAHS housing programme 111 shelter types 105–6 shifting patterns of 108–9 Tangatjira housing designs 111–12 Traditional-Owner groups 117 windbreak shelter 106–7 Indonesia. See also Javanese art and culture 93–4 consumerism 96 cultural diversity 93 economic crisis 96 heritage conservation in 95–6 Kotagede 95 luxury malls 96–8 migration and delocalization 93 modernization 96 religion 98 social class 91–2

298 Index

tourism sites 96 transformation of Javanese houses 89–93 vernacularity as tradition 87–9 Indonesian Heritage Cities Network (Jaringan Kota Pusaka Indonesia – JKPI) 93 Indonesian Heritage Trust (Badan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia/BPPI) 93 Indonesian Houses (Schefold, Nas and Domenig) 2 Indonesian Shopping Center Association (APPBI) 96–7 Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living (Fox) 2 international migration 233 International Self-Help Housing Associates (ISHA) 126 internet access 25, 57, 93 intra- Asia Pacific colonial agricultural trading 175, 177–82 intra-national climate change adaptation 232 Irazábal, Clara 235 Iredale Pedersen Hook (IPH) 111–12 iwi (tribes) 8, 36. See also Māori Javanese Australian sugar industry 177–8 building traditions 89–93 class system 89 culture and 87–8 heritage conservation 95–6 Islam 98–100 joglo and limasan wooden houses 9–10, 88–91 traditional houses 89–90 Jogja Heritage Society (JHS) 95 joglo and limasan wooden houses 88–91 Jones, Paul 153 Kabir, Nahid 178 Kabulwarnamyo homeland 121–4 Kanak architecture 14–15, 281 anterior architectural forms 282 for Catholics 286–7 elements of 281–3 Loyalty Islands 290 Melanesia 2000 288 modernization 287 New Caledonian society 289 for Protestants 286 round house construction 283–4, 287–9 social space 284–5 tourism 289–91 tribal habitat transformations 286–7 tribu (tribe) 284–5 Karsten, Thomas 177 kaupapa Māori research 36, 39. See Māori architecture kawa and Western ethical research practice 40–1

Māori worldview perspective 39–40 marae communities 40 whakapapa database 42 Kench, Paul S. 135, 138, 149 King, Anthony 180–1 Kiribati’s ‘Migration with Dignity’ programme 233 Kitson, Barry 29 Kohl, David 198–9 Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) 24 Kunguma village housing 158–61 Kwajalein Mid-corridor housing project 147–8 land-based residential buildings, Tubusereia 163 land management organization partnership 121 at Kabulwarnamyo 121–4 landscape vernacular 231 climate risks and displacement 232–3 and cultural identity in Oceania 231–2 design and planning 234–5 Indigenous cultural values 231, 235 migration as adaptation 233–4 Laugier, Marc Antoine 276 Laura housing adaptations 140–6 Leckie, Scott 234 Lewin Terrace 204 Lewis, Brian 198 Lewis, Clare 195 Lewis, Miles 199, 201–4 lifestylization 92 lightweight shelter types 10 limasan houses 10 linguistic creolization 9, 78, 81 n.6 with architectural creolization 65–6 pidgin languages 66 Stacey’s photographs 75–8 Varman’s interpretations 73–5 The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (Waterson) 1 Lloyd, Mary 195 Locsin, Leandro V. 271–2, 276 London Missionary Society (LMS) 248–9, 286 Long, Stephen 113 Lo – TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism (Watson) 2 The Lovo Hut design concept 239 Lucas, Clive 184 Lukito, Yulia 177 Mackenzie, Alexander 184 Macknight, Campbell 178 Macpherson, C. 55–7 Majapahit architects 6 Majuro housing adaptations 137–40, 143, 149 Mamadawerre 123

Maningrida homelands 124–6, 128–9 Manning houses 195–6 Mañosa, Francisco 271–3, 276 Māori Architecture: From Fale to Wharanui and Beyond (Brown) 2 Māori/Māori architecture 1, 8, 36–7. See also marae buildings 8–9, 35, 51 colonization and European contact damages 38 earthquakes 38 papakāinga (communal housing) 58–9 raupō houses 52 technologies 7 wharepuni (sleeping houses) 51–2 marae 36 architecture of 40 community hub 56–7 space 6, 8, 36–7 tūrangawaewae 57 wharenui 37 (see also wharenui construction (community meeting house)) Marcos, Ferdinand E. 271 Margolis, Richard 126 marine-based houses, Tubusereia 163–4 Marshall Islands Journal 136 Martínez, Julia 177–9 Matapihi he Tirohanga mō te Iwi Trust 58 Matavera churchscape 248, 250–1 physical modifications 255 Maudlin, Daniel 214–15 medical clinic project 24, 28 Melanesia 2000 288 Melbourne commercial built environments 213–14 anti-immigration/racist 215–16 Bhutanese/Nepalese community 223–4 commercial cultures 214–16 ethnic markers 221–2 immigrant community 215–16 Invermay Road Mowbray 223–5 restaurants 216–18, 221–2 spatial practices 214–16, 219, 222 sugar industry 178–9 Sydney Road 220–3 traditional vernacular 214–16 Victoria Street Gateway 218–20 Victoria Street in Richmond 216–18 Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) property maps 199–200 Memmott, Bree 30 Memmott, Paul 110, 113, 235, 238 Menke, Broderick 147 Metropolitan Theater of Manila 268–9 migration and cultural change 3–7, 9 anti-immigration/racist 215–16

Index 299

climate mobilities (see climate change migration; Rimajol architectural traditions) design spaces and 50 Fijian (see Fijian migrants) Polynesian migration to Aotearoa 49–50, 55 (see also Aotearoa (New Zealand)) Richmond 216–20 Miller, James 235, 242 modernization/modernity 96, 165–6 churchscape 252–3 Kanak vernacular architecture 287 prefabricated architecture 195 mon kijidrik (Rimajol thatch house) 138–40 Moore, Clive 178–9, 182 Mount Catt homeland community 120, 126–9 mud-brick houses 119–20, 124–6, 128–9 Muhammadiyah Islamic organizations 98 Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) 98 Nakpil, Angel E. 270 Nakpil, Juan 269 Namdrik housing adaptations 140–6 Nash, Clare 88 National Aboriginal Health Strategy (NAHS) housing programme 111 nationalism 265–6 National Press Club 270 Nawarddeken traditional shelter 121 New Architecture on Indigenous Lands (Malnar and Vodvarka) 2 A New Home in the Pacific design concept 240 New Zealand 22–3. See also Aotearoa (New Zealand) climate refugees in 233–4 Cook Islanders 257–8 housing vernacular 54 migration policy 233–4 pakeha settlers in 289 New Zealand Building Code (NZBC) 51 non-residential buildings 57–8 Norfolk Island architecture 9, 65–6 Colonial Georgian architecture in 69–70 creolization 67, 72–3, 79 Evans’ Style 73–5 history of 69 inventory of buildings 70–1 Pitcairner Colonial Georgian style 73–5 Pitcairn Islanders architecture 66, 68–72 Royal Engineers 78 Stacey’s photographs 75–8 Nugroho, P. S. 89–90 Ocampo, Fernando 269 Official Development Assistance (ODA) 22–3

300 Index

Oliver, Paul 88, 119–20, 129 Oram, N. D. 161 O’Rourke, Timothy 10 Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture (Kiddle, Stewart and O’Brien) 2 Outstation Resource Agencies (ORA) 118 outstations 124–6. See also Indigenous architecture Owen, Susan D. 136 Ozkan, Suha 50 Pacific architecture 2, 7–9, 21. See also Solomon Islands project; Tongan building projects aid funding 21–4 in Aotearoa New Zealand 55 building design 29–31 communal building and structures 56–8 cross-cultural design 22 delivering project 24–6 landscape vernacular and climate mobilities 231–5 modernity 21 nuclear family, design for 55–6 procurement process 26–9 transformation 21 Pākehā (non-Māori) 49, 55 papakāinga (communal housing) 58–9 Papua New Guinea (PNG) 11–12 dual land tenure system 154 European-style buildings 156–7 geographic variation 156 housing transformation processes 153–5, 159 impacts of colonization 156 informal settlements 154 Kunguma village 158–61 modernity 165–6 post-colonial transformation 156–8 research report 155–6 traditional architecture 153, 157–9 Tubusereia village 161–5 vernacular architectural changes 156 Parsons, William E. 267, 276 Paul, David 147 Peattie, Lisa 234 Pedersen, Finn 112 Penang 204–6 Peter, Sonja 126 Philippine national identity 266 American colonialism 266–9 nationalist programmes 276 politics 276–7 post-colonialism and 269–74 tropical conditions 276 Picache Building 270 pidginization 66–8, 72

quality assurance 29 Queensland and Sydney Georgian domestic housing 68 Queenslander house 12, 180–8 Queensland sugar industry 178–9

Kwajalein Mid-corridor housing project 147–8 Laura adaptations 140–6 Majuro adaptations 137–40, 143, 149 migration 148–9 Namdrik adaptations 140–6 Reimaanlok Plan 137 Rimajol architecture (see Rimajol architectural traditions) vernacular architecture in 138, 140, 147–8 Reser, Joseph 109–10 reverberations 58 Richmond, Victoria Street 216–20 Rimajol architectural traditions 11, 134 Aelon̄ Kein Ad 134–5 building materials 143–7 building strategies and environmental response 141–3 climate change 135–6 corrugated roofing 143–4 imported housing 135–47 Indigenous design knowledge within 135–7, 141, 147–9 thatch house 138–40 in the United States 136 vernacular housing 147–8 wood types 144–5 Rinaldo, Rachel 99 Rockwood, David 147 Roderick, Donald 181 Rowley, Charles Dunford 154 Royal Packet Navigation Company of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Paketvaart- Maatschappij/KPM) 175–8 Rudofsky, Bernard 50

Rapoport, Amos 50 Rarotonga’s historic churches 248–9. See also Cook Islands Christian Church (CICC) Christianity’s reach to 249–50 socio-political realities in 254 raupō (reed) house 51–2 architecture and construction methods 57 occupation of 52–4 reef and coastal houses 6 Refiti, Albert 231–2 Refurbishment of the Tonga Airport 24 The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) 134 deep-cultural patterns in 137 DUD’s urban development 137, 143 environmental adaptation strategies in 148, 235 housing programmes 147 housing typologies 138–40 in situ adaptation and migration 135–8 international housing programmes 146

Sarawak 193, 202–6 saujana 95 Scaglion, Richard 153 Scally, Simon 119–20, 124–5 Schumacher, Ernst Friedrich 120 Schuyler, Montgomery 267 Second World War European-style buildings 156–7 Māori population 36 state houses 53–5 self-help/self-reliant construction 126–8 Selwyn, Sarah 70–1 semi-detached housing 9, 90 Semper, Gottfried 166 shade shelter types 10 Shapiro, Harry 71 Sharp, Lauriston 107 Shils, Edward 153 Sillitoe, Paul 154

Pitcairner Colonial Georgian style 65, 73–80 Pitcairn Islanders architecture 65–6 double cottage 71–2 houses 9, 72 linguistic and architectural isolation 78, 81 n.1 on Norfolk Island 66, 68–71 pidgin architectural form 72 Pitman, Charles 249 plantation estates and agricultural sites 183–8 building construction methods 184 Burns Philp building 185–6 residences 184–5, 188 sheds and warehouses 183–4 Sumatra plantation houses 185 timber house 183–4 Polynesian communities housing 55 migration 49–50 Pont, Henri Maclaine 177 Portable Buildings (Lewis and Lloyd) 198 The Portable Colonial Cottage (Herbert) 199 Port Essington settlement 181 pōwhiri process 40 Prange, Julia 230 prefabrication/prefabricated houses 195–7 procurement process 23, 26–9 project delivery 24–6 Protestants, Kanak populations 286

Index 301

The Singapore Cottage (Lewis) 199 Singapore cottages 193–4 advertisements 199 Atbara 204 in Australia 195–7 Chinese carpenters 202–6 in Collingwood 197–202 conservation analysis 199–200 imported to Melbourne 200 Malay roof construction 201 Manning houses 195–6 and Penang houses 204–5 prefabricated buildings 196 production of 196–7 series cottages 200–2 timber buildings 194 traditional carpentry works 201–2 sleeping building (wharepuni) 8–9, 51 Small Is Beautiful (Schumacher) 120 Smith, Anita 256–7 Smith, Anthony 265 Smith, Graham 42 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai 134 Solomon Islands National University (SINU) 24 Solomon Islands project aid funding 23–4 building design 29–31 procurement process 26–9 project delivery 24–6 spatial practices 7, 214–16, 219, 222 Spennemann, Dirk 137 Spoehr, Alexander 143, 147 Stacey, Wesley 75 state house 54–5 occupation of 55–6 stone architectural technologies 6–7 Stone, Henry 182 Studies on the Craftsmanship of Traditional Chinese carpenters in the Fujian Region (Zhang) 206 Sumatra 184–5, 188 Sydney’s Georgian architecture 68–9 talanoa, Indigenous research method 25 Tangentyere housing designs 111–12 Technology on Country (ToC) Hub 130 Telban, Borut 166 tendering phase. See procurement process Tilley, C. 153 Timber and Iron: Houses in North Queensland Mining Settlements (Bell) 181 timber houses 183–8, 194 timber vernacular house 9 Tjibaou, Jean-Marie 288

302 Index

Tjibau Cultural Centre 15 Tongan building projects aid funding 21, 23–4 building design 29–31, 34 n.32 procurement process 26–9 project delivery 24–6 To the Islands: White Australians and the Malay Archipelago since 1788 (Battersby) 177 tourism sites, Indonesian 96 traditional architecture 87–9, 266 highland village housing 158–9 Kunguma village 158–61 Papua New Guinean 153, 157–8, 165–6 Tubusereia village 161–5 traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) 230 tribe/iwi 8, 36. See also Māori/Māori architecture Kanak vernacular architecture 284–7 Tubusereia village housing 161–5 Tukuitonga, Colin 56 typhoon-proof transitional dwelling 140 United States 11, 266–9, 273 creole architecture 66, 68, 80 Rimajol settlements 135–8, 149 United States Department of Agriculture Mutual Self – Help Housing programme 140 University of South Pacific (USP) project in Solomon Islands 24. See Solomon Islands project USDA-funded houses 145–6 Valverde, Javier Ponce 50 van der Geest, Kees 137, 148 van Klinken, Gerry 91 Varman, Robert 65, 69 Vellinga, Marcel 58, 119, 128, 147, 266 veranda feature 70–3, 75–8, 112, 162, 179–81 vernacular architecture/vernacularism 1, 266 on Arnhem Land homelands 119–20, 129–30 of Australasia and Oceania 1–2, 15 Australian 214–16 climate and culture 50, 88 climate change adaptation approach 147 colonial/postcolonial contexts in 7 colonial prefabrication and 195–7 in Fujian 206–7 hunter-gatherer shelter type 4–5 immigrations and 3–4 (see also migration and cultural change) Indigenous knowledge 147 influences on 7 and modernity 9–10 Papua New Guinea 156 raupō (reed) house 51–4

regional analyses on 1–2 role of 50 state house 54–6 as tradition 87–9, 153 in transition 89–93 Warddeken 123 Vickers, Adrian 177–9 Victorian Historical Magazine 198 Victoria Street’s commercial architecture 216–20 Vietnamese/Chinese restaurants 216–18 Warddeken Land Management (WLM) partnership 121–4, 128 The Weiwu at Dafushen: Unseen Details of the Chinese Vernacular (Guo and Zhang) 206 whakapapa (genealogy) database 36, 39, 42 whānau kāinga (family settlements/villages) adaptation 58 wharenui construction (community meeting house) 8, 35, 37, 39

approach and collaboration 42 assessment and interview 43–4 documentation 44 investigation of 42 marae visit 43 wharepuni (sleeping houses) 8, 51–2 Wigley, Julian 110–11 Williams, F. E. 156, 158 Williams, Wiremu 40 Willingham, Alan 195, 199, 200, 202 windbreak shelter 106–7 Windowpane oyster shells 267 wooden architecture 1, 54, 89–90 wooden joglo 9–10, 88–91 Wood, Stephen 215 Wood, Terence 24 Woodward, Mark R. 98 World Bank 22–4

Index 303

305

307