Abstract:
A nondescript building remains standing in a historic built context and cultural
landscape of Pouērua in Northland, Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s history undisclosed,
with notable features and a construction methodology comparative to several of New
Zealand’s oldest buildings dating pre-1840.
This thesis investigates architectural heritage and the tension between Anglo-
American models of heritage treatment as we seek the inclusion to evolve and open
towards incorporating more culturally sensitive approaches suitable to buildings and
landscapes in this country’s bi-cultural context. Issues speak to building conservation
and the theory concerning the application of new interventions in settings of such
kind.
Given this disposition, a living heritage approach has yielded the potential to go
beyond the building to evoke the wider context of Pouērua and its original
association, enabling old and new narratives of cultivation and settlement to be
implemented through the continuity of seven stations. Development of three
interventions respond to both the past and present through the exchange of seasonal
workshops and actions of construction and deconstruction, a process evolving
tangible and intangible values. This thesis attends to the adaption and reinvention,
expressing the relationship between place and people. How do we translate this into
an architecture today? – we make a building that is recyclable, low embodied energy,
sustainable, can be dismantled, passively heated and cooled, not a big footprint, and
yet is of beauty, born of its environment.
