RAU HOSKINS
INTERVIEW
IMAGE Meg Back
SKETCH Tosh Graham
Ngati Hau, Ngapuhi, BArch, MArch(Hons), Academic NZIA
Rau
Hoskins is a director of the designTribe architectural practice
specialising in kaupapa Maori design. He has over 20 years experience
working with Maori community-based design projects and has for the past
15 years specialized in the design of Maori educational institutions in
the wider Auckland area. He has also worked extensively as an urban and
cultural design consultant, as well as in iwi liaison capacities on a
range of large public projects.
Rau
is a co-opted member of the Housing New Zealand Maori Capability
Committee and remains active in Maori housing advocacy and papakainga
design projects. Rau teaches part-time at the Unitec Department of
Architecture and, with colleague Carin Wilson, has been active in
researching both traditional and hybrid Maori dwelling construction
techniques. In recent times, Rau has played a major part in developing
the Auckland Design Manual, with his work on the Te Aranga Maori design
principles.
Xsection: Where or what is your first memory of place?
RH: Probably
the first place memory is in Whāngarei where I was brought up and that
would be - I was about two years old, we were moving houses, I think we
walked from one house to the next house as far as I can recall; that’s
really my earliest memory of place, Bank St, Whāngarei. But I guess that
my over riding “placeness” at this point of time in my life is our
family land, whānau land at Whangaruru harbour and our marae Whakapara
which is just inland. I’ve been lucky to be involved with the marae in
designing our meeting house back in 1998 and now our dining hall which
is due to start construction, all going well, in December, this year.
I
think from a personal perspective, the Māori renaissance has provided a
huge backdrop for sense of place because the renaissance asks Māori
people to locate themselves primarily within hapu - hapū as in being
‘local place’. When anyone goes to learn basic Māori, whether they’re
Māori or non Māori, they will be asked to develop a pepeha for example
“ko Huruiki te Maunga, ko Whakapara te awa ” and so of course that
requires people to do some research or to think if they’re not Māori
then where or what is my mountain, is it Rangitoto etc?
Apparently
Māori are the only culture in the world who have such a systemised
place making oral device [the pepeha] and there’s been some research on
this. Stating your marae, your maunga, your hapu, your awa, is
reinforcing this notion of place. Of course what comes with that is
Kaitiakitanga, but also what comes from that often is a sense of loss,
for example you might state your maunga but the maunga is not in hapu
ownership or in tribal ownership, or its been quarried away and it’s an
‘inverse’maunga. You can state your awa but it might be one of the most
polluted awa, for instance in Ngāti Porou they talk about “ko Waiapu te
awa” but that’s one of the highest topsoil content rivers in the world
in terms of sediment and that can be quite difficult; you can’t suddenly
jump the fence and choose another awa. So what comes with this
placemaking device is potentially a lot of good activity, good kaitiaki
activity, but often a sense of powerlessness too. Ko Waiapu te awa but
what can I do? The regional council sets the water quality measures and
the fencing of waterways and deforestation and all that other sort of
stuff…
What
I try to do with non-Māori people is encourage them to develop not just
a pepeha but to think about a place which is special to them, whether
it’s an ancestral farm that they used to have or still have. Then I kind
of challenge them to say if you want to become indigenous, if you look
at the process of becoming indigenous, if in 500 years time your family
is still in this area; you will have a whole lot of other values than
you have now. Things will have moved on and hopefully deepened, so how
can you lock in that indigeneity through land tenure or connection? In
Pākehā society there’s always this sense of loss, often associated with a
family farm that’s been in the family for many, many years and then
some uncle sells it because the children don’t want it or needed the
money or what ever; then there’s this pining “we used to go there as
children but it’s gone now….” What I say is that the Pākehā law has got
some very interesting and useful techniques for holding land in trust,
if this place is really special to you, don’t allow it to go to uncle
Jimmy, create a trust and say it’s the MacGregor family trust or
whatever and then once it’s locked up you can begin to build
relationships with the mana whenua, become co-kaitiaki, and you can say
if we’re digging into this place then we care about this place; what are
the relationships we need to develop to deepen our relationships with
mana whenua and shared interest: air quality, water quality, soil
quality…?
Xsection: How would you define the term mana whenua within this context?
RH: Well
the term mana whenua has been developed to acknowledge a range of
tribal groups who have had a historical interest in a piece of land;
they may not be the primary mana whenua, they may not be the current ahi
kā but they are mana whenua. The Auckland region is very pertinent in
the use of that terminology: when we see the relatively recent conquest
of the isthmus by Ngāti Whātua in about 1750, we see what we have is a
process of intermarriage and also of other iwi being displaced to the
periphery. They didn’t go away - all their names still presided. So what
happened in the old Auckland city days prior to the amalgamations was
that Ngāti Whātua had a pre-eminent status within Auckland City because
of their role in creating the city in the first place, the invitation to
Hobson in 1840 and so on and so forth. With the new Auckland region,
the 8 councils and 21 iwi groupings, you’ve got a democratisation of iwi
interests going on and the notion of mana whenua has gained greater
currency.
But
from a design perspective, an urban design or landscape design
perspective; what it requires is both the council entity and the
designer to have a good historical understanding so that they can
acknowledge primary mana whenua status and wider mana whenua status. If
you are doing that, you are showing that you do understand some nuance
in status - mana whenua status. So the Te Aranga Māori design principles
which we have just uploaded to the Auckland Design Manual web site as
of yesterday (Oct 1, 2013) do start to point to some of these nuances
and are asking designers and client groups to be mindful of these
situations where there is definitely a primary grouping.
Xsection: Have you explicitly laid out guidelines?
RH: Yes, you can view the design manual online
Essentially
the whakapapa of those principles goes back to 2005 with Te Puni Kōkiri
contacting me at the time and saying we’re a bit worried about the
Urban Design Protocol and its lack of kaupapa Māori dimension. I’m
saying well I don’t want to personally write a chapter or just a
personal response, lets get a group of people together, so in June 2006
we got a national hui together in Waitākere city, a group of people
involved with resource management, with iwi governance, etc and there
was really interesting set of responses, but essentially they said we
don’t want to just be a chapter in the Urban Design Protocol, we don’t
want to bolt onto something, to an initiative which is essentially a
western approach to landscape but we do want to pursue or own strategies
here. So then in November, 2006, at Te Aranga Marae in Flaxmere
(Hastings) we developed the core of the Te Aranga Māori landscape
development strategy with was to be and is, a web based set of resources
which could help to inform iwi and hapū cultural landscapes design
strategies. So for instance Ngāti Whanaunga could develop their own
cultural landscape design strategy based on their hapū management plan
or their iwi management plan that they had already developed.
Xsection: So place is very strongly integrated with design?
RH: Yes!
Iwi management plans and hapū management plans record sacred spots and
they record sensitive locations, wāhi tapu and whatever else but they
don’t record the next layer that would talk about the desire to record
the number of x-species because of this cultural narrative and the need
to remember this name, this name and this name, which have been overlaid
by Pākehā names; and daylight those names, daylight those ancestors,
daylight those kōrero.
So
that was where [the guidelines] went to, and then last year with three
projects: AMETI, Quay St and CRL, we were able to bring, to distill from
Te Aranga Māori Landscape Cultural strategy, a series of principles
which we trialed with iwi. We have further consulted with iwi in the
last three months as well, to the point where we are comfortable to
release these as part of the Auckland Design Manual.
Essentially
what we are saying is in any given development, but particularly in
shared landscapes, if you’re serious about making a difference for Mana
Whenua primarily, then there are a series of approaches that you can
utilise. The first of course is mana /rangatiratanga; you can’t as a
designer or a client make a meaningful mana whenua contribution to the
cultural landscape without mana whenua being engaged in a way that they
are happy with. Let Mana Whenua determine how strong/how full /how early
that relationship is and then you can begin to collaboratively apply
the other principles.
The
next one is whakapapa, really about names and naming; then we move to
tohu, an acknowledgement of the wider landscape and those wāhi tapu
beyond the subject site. A good designer, a good landscape architect or
architect will acknowledge context, but they will acknowledge context
normally in a Eurocentric way. You need to acknowledge context from a
mana whenua perspective, which is to the horizon, which is seeing the
unseen, which is acknowledging a world that exists in the mind, a world
which still sees maunga as this when in reality they are this… so
acknowledging that whole world which is not necessarily seen.
Then
we move onto mauri: the acknowledgement of the spiritual life essence
of living and non-living things and opportunities to restore Mauri,
protect mauri, enhance mauri.
Then
moving on to Te Taiao, the bringing back of natural, living
environments particularly to urban areas, acknowledging that the
ultimate expression of taiao is mahinga kai or the actual act of food
gathering, or weaving species, or pā harakeke. The 6th principle is mahi
toi, which is that once you have this rich palette of information,
stories, pūrākau, kōrero, ancestors’ names, species then you can start
to respond as a landscape architect with all this richness and work with
iwi appointed artists or designers to start to give expression to all
that stuff.
Then
the last one, the one I think has been undercooked in the past is that
ahi kā dimension, and that is, well, you have this really cool
environment, these neat species, you’ve got this sculpture here and this
building there; how can you negotiate a living mana whenua presence in
this space, whether it is through a joint venture commercial
development, through a puna wai where wai ora is utilised regularly for
blessing purposes or whether through a particular pa harakeke where this
resource can be provided for local weavers. Whether it’s a whare waka
where waka culture can be properly supported, on the waterfront for
instance. So it’s saying ok, in a post settlement environment you can
have commercial discussions with iwi that you couldn’t have had 10 -15
years ago.
An
interesting and relevant point is that with the city rail link there’s a
lot of land going to be purchased. Some of that land is going to be
sold again eventually because its been bought for plant purposes, so
it’s not required for the corridor but it’s required for all the
machinery and whatever else at one end or other. Once you come to sell
that land, instead of going to the open market talk to iwi, talk to mana
whenua about how could iwi and council combined, or Auckland transport
and iwi, look at this piece of land in terms of maximizing ahi kā
opportunity. Could there be a Ngāti Paoa iwi headquarters here or
whatever else?
Xsection: Do you need consensus to make design decisions?
RH: I
think drilling deeper into the notion of consensus, in the realm that
I’m talking about, you do need a quality working relationship with mana
whenua, that’s a pre-requisite to making design decisions which will
have resonance. The premise is that if you get it right for mana whenua
then mātaawaka will also appreciate that. When Ngā Puhi walk through
Ngāti Whātua territory they don’t expect to see Ngā Puhi represented
there but they’d like to see mana whenua represented there. Because they
know when they’re back in their territory what it feels like to be
disenfranchised, or conversely enfranchised by appropriate development.
Those environments work better for Pākehā, deepening their sense of
place; and they work better for tourists/manuhiri, who have seen western
architecture or North American landscape architecture done better
elsewhere. They’re hungry for the unique dimension and they’re more
worldly and they’re more interested in indigenous expression. That’s the
difference that they’re hungering for; when we’re in the States we walk
past McDonald’s and we don’t go ah! McDonald’s, how amazing! This is
hunger for something unique.
Xsection:
So for overseas landscape architects, coming in to the country to work
on projects, what do you think they need to understand about New Zealand
to practice here?
RH: Well
they need to understand as much as they can about mana whenua and Māori
culture. We’re doing a project at the moment with some Australian
architects, a 20 year master plan at the Auckland museum and a couple of
the key team members are Australian architects who did the art gallery
development here. Our job as wider team members is to try and inculcate
them in Māori culture as best as we can, given the time constraints, so
we’re organizing a wānanga up at the museum with Mana Whenua. Firstly,
because it’s the right thing to do. Secondly, because we’re trying to
give our Aussies as much of a feeling as they can get in the time that’s
available. It’s a hearts and minds thing. I think for any overseas
designer I would think a marae experience; not a tourist marae
experience but a mana whenua marae experience would be an essential
pre-requisite.
This
is not only fascinating but you’ve pretty much covered all of our
pre-prepared questions, without us even having to ask most of them,
which really shows how pertinent your point of view is to
placemaking...What do you think of the term “placemaking”?
In
the context of this discussion placemaking is about the creation of a
space, which transcends neutrality and becomes a place that resonates in
the hearts and minds of mana whenua. And as I said, if mana whenua are
happy and engaged then the flow on effects, the ripples go on out to
everyone else. I think the notion of place is really about drilling into
the depths of what it means to make space meaningful for mana whenua.
Xsection: Which brings us to our final question: How do we create a contemporary sense of place?
RH: I
think there’s this notion of mua and muri. Another project we’re
involved in is called Te Ara Mua: which is future streets. That’s about
making our streets attractive for pedestrians, cyclists, safe for all
users, memorable places; places which connect to ancestors, events and
environments. A contemporary placemaking approach is never going to be
about returning something to exactly how it used to be but it’s
acknowledging those dimensions which are meaningful, remembering those
in contemporary ways, and acknowledging all the other dynamics which are
crowded in on those spaces.
When
we talk about Te Ara Mua, we’re looking back to look forward. I think
that’s the critical issue with colonisation –is that in the physical
realm we get so much overlaying, what is often required is a peeling
back; but not just in a literal sense of peeling back, but peeling back
from a design sense and saying how do you develop a lens or a series of
lenses which enable you to look into all of those dimensions and bring
them forward in a way which is meaningful for everybody. I think if you
begin to look and see some places that have been made in this
post-colonial design context, you can start to see some glimmers of how
you might create a contemporary sense of place. They are the places that
have had really solid Mana Whenua engagement and they’ve had designers,
whether they’re Māori or non-Māori who have been really receptive. So
spaces are beginning to come through. But there’s a hell of a lot more
work to do…
