Abstract:
This thesis looks at Pacific notions of space, the typology of the marae, the ideology of the tangihanga and Māori narrative mythology around death, to generate and test ideas around how an urban space for funeral rituals that is not a marae may be able to accommodate the funeral rituals of the urban communities of Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). The project continues an ongoing conversation by posing a speculative solution to one of the complex cultural challenges facing Auckland’s urban communities - the lack of a space which acknowledges the cultural complexity of our urban groups and provides adequately for these communities throughout periods of death and mourning. Through an iterative drawing and modelling practice and an analysis of the deceptively simple spaces of the marae and how they operate in a variety of complex ways during the event of a tangi, the concepts of thresholds, liminality and transcendence are explored in relation to the marae as an immersive experience, as a series of rituals or steps. The project generates architectural outcomes through an abstract drawing practice exploring the experiential qualities of the tangi as spatial expressions in order to propose a space that is culturally ‘neutral’ but which makes provision for the tangi as a key rite of passage for Māori.
