Abstract:
For we, Polynesians, our intrigue into finding new places and discovering them fortuitiously has been an attribute engraved into our nature. With the lust of the journey coaxing us into foreign territories, one aspect remains true, in every turn and that is the environment we are in search of. Mapping has been our way of finding our way to where we’ve been, which has incited the journey. It has the ability to rebel against its conventional process of surveying what is already there predetermining what will be there. Mapping can offer an insight in to the intangible qualities of how people perceive of their place. Located far north of Tongatapu resides Vava’u, an island that hosts its very own archipelago. Nicknamed the ‘Feke’ which means Octopus. With the arms outstretched into the ocean, nestled and scattered in front are a litter of ‘motus.Vava’u is the very depiction of Epeli Hau’ofa’s ‘Sea of islands’. With the expansive pacific ocean right outside their shores the spirit of the journey on land and in water is activated at all times in everyday life. Mapping began as an expression of the journey I was about to endeavour into. Mapping finally became a space where it has been reclaimed by the indigenous lense to help cultivate an expression uninhibited by conceptions of the West. The clear division between western approaches of mapping and my own, is due to its past of being a tool facilitating control. This was not a base point in which I wanted to bring forth a map that reflects the way Tongan people move through and perceive of their land. It is experiencing the everyday, of how people move through space that architecture could help to facilitate the role of the map. The programme proposed is an archive and studio space that collects the making of the maps, a vaka and a Observatorium. These buildings are on two different motu’s (small islands).The Observatory is situated on the motu that over looks the mouth of the island and oversees the edge where the waters of Vava’u meet the pacific ocean. In this endeavour architecture isn’t a representation of the map, architecture is a presentation of the elemental conditions that are constantly activated within this project. The Land, Ocean and sky are realms that constitutes to the rhythm of nature. Architecture provids the permanence by activating the ground on which we reside on, Ground, Sky and Ocean being the universal story we share.