The first Indigenous head of an architecture school in New Zealand, Deidre has become a leading scholarly figure in the emerging field of decolonisation practice.
As a student, she was both fearless and direct – always with the emphasis on ‘form’, she didn’t fall into the trap of being a star performer. These qualities have persisted in her work. Under Deidre’s direction, Māori and Pacific architecture have become a principal strength of the Auckland School [University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau].
In 2018, ArchitectureNow asked Deidre about her early days at the School of Architecture. She said: ‘In my intermediate year I studied New Zealand history and did the first part of Māori studies as well, and I was taught by people like Ranginui Walker; there was this sense that, perhaps, change was in the air. You had people like Mike Austin talking about Māori architecture and Mike Linzey teaching about Māori architecture from a theoretical perspective. But, at that time, there weren’t a lot of settlements yet from the Waitangi tribunal, so there wasn’t that impetus for change that there is now.
‘Even the thought that Māori architecture could be a thing that might be addressed at the School of Architecture was amazing, though. At that stage it was just about understanding, or putting into an architectural discourse, what Māori architecture was in terms of its history and the way space was used and how it was distinct from Western uses of space.’
Deidre excelled in the Bachelor of Architecture course, graduating with honours. She completed the Master of Architecture by thesis with distinction. From this time, she began to develop a proposition that has remained central in all her endeavours. She argued that Māori architecture in New Zealand serves the purpose to regather what she called the Mōrehu, or driftwood people, who had become dispersed and displaced by colonial forces, giving them a place to call home and an architecture in which to dwell with dignity.
When she entered the doctoral programme in 1993 Deidre soon discovered the power and joy of archival research. Her detective work knew no bounds. In these early years of scholarship, she would gently but implacably question received knowledge and wayward assertions: she had her own way to follow. Studying at a time of theoretical intensity, Deidre’s work on Māori and Mōrehu architecture demonstrated a concern with evidence to be found in materiality, social life and cultural knowledge. And in later years her research has continued to focus primarily on Māori and Pacific art and architectural history.
It is sometimes hard to recall what the architectural culture was like in those days when Deidre was a student. Very few Māori students were enrolled and there was only one optional course on Māori (later extended to Oceanic) architecture and that was generally regarded as marginal, with only a small number of students. There was also a desire among rural Māori to attract young people back to the marae for important occasions, which meant they had to have facilities such as dining halls and toilets. The School of Architecture was often contacted for student designs and marae visits became the basis for annual field trips. Māori urbanisation was also well underway and there had been much talk concerning the possibility of marae in the cities – although many people argued they were not possible except as community centres.
At the school during this time were Mike Barns and Tere Insley, who became Young Māori Man and Woman of the Year, and Rewi Thompson. It is hard now to imagine that all ethnically based categories were regarded with intense suspicion. Māori and Pacific architecture was a poor relation. But when Deidre entered into this world, she was able to work from her whakapapa and Te ao Māori.
In the early days of Deidre’s writing, timber – carved, painted and inscribed – was the physical bearer of architecture for a complex and fluid society that was shaped by, and resistant to, colonial forces. For readers, her careful descriptions of physical objects generated a sense of amplitude, orientation, substance and ornamentation, deployed with clear effect. Physical things mattered in her architectural world. Later, her expanded and often collaborative work in art and architecture reinforced the importance of cultural patterning and the consequent transforming of the materiality of architecture and objects.
Deidre’s scholarly practice involves careful compilations of words and images, always relying on archival evidence to support her analyses of built architecture. She understands the power of images from the past and present. These images provide accessible communication, which she sees as valuable for the dissemination of her work to scholarly, professional and community audiences. In her writing, Deidre always makes apparent the effects of colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her meticulous analyses trace both declines and revivals of traditions of Māori architecture: a back-and-forth interweaving kōwhaiwhai patterning persists, unspoken, in the air of all the descriptions she utilises and produces.
Dr Mike Austin, Dr Mike Linzey and Dr Sarah Treadwell are former staff members at the Auckland School of Architecture, now Waipapa Taumata Rau School of Architecture and Planning.
Above: The meeting house and courthouse, known as Hiona Te Whare Kāwana, established by Rua Kēnana Hepetipa at Maungapōhatu. The āpotoro on the walkway with whānau. Photograph George Bourne, circa 1908, Alexander Turnbull Library, APG-1679-1/2-G.