Abstract:
Maori and Pakeha people have lived together in New Zealand for only a few hundred years and much has happened in that time to transform our country and the people who live in it. We share ancestors who came from somewhere else, and for Pakeha that was not long ago. But, just as our shared history gives us things in common, there are issues between us that have their roots in the past.1 Knowledge of our past is important for understanding what it is to be a ‘New Zealander’. It is an important question to ask why is much of our history, which is all around us in cities, towns and the countryside is often only displayed through the lens of the dominant culture of the Pakeha while the Maori experience of our history often remains invisible, unacknowledged? A striking example of this phenomenon from an architectural perspective is within the Auckland Domain. In 1940 Princess Te Puea Herangi, a leader of the Kingitanga Movement from Waikato Tainui, planted a tree in the Domain to memorialize peace and unity 100 years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Using the Auckland Domain as a site, the aim of this thesis is to take New Zealanders on a journey of discovery concerning the 19th–century New Zealand Wars between Pakeha and Maori, and sometimes Maori and Maori, which were so important in helping shape our country. It is no accident that conflict between Pakeha and Maori greatly increased after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. This investigation responds to the Auckland War Memorial Museum (Tamaki Paenga Hira) and Te Puea’s totara tree, and their relationship in memorializing the New Zealand Wars, and approaches the task of creating an architecture that tells a story of our dark and somewhat conflicted past. My project is to create a New Zealand Wars Memorial under the sacred totara tree planted by Te Puea on Pukekaroa Hill in the Auckland domain. Memorialisation of the 2,899 lives lost during 1843- 1870 New Zealand Wars will be inspiration to create a place of remembrance and reflection. Designing a ‘living memorial’ is paramount in this thesis as it advocates for future peace not war, it also acts as a contribution to the community and creates education and enlightenment opposed to memorialisation techniques of the past such as large stone piles or statues that were designed to glorify war. As Andrew Shanken has written, “choosing a form of memorial was tantamount to choosing a form of society.” 2