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The Maori Response to Gothic Architecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Deidre Brown
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Extract

The development of a scholarly discourse about Maori ‘architecture’ has been somewhat hampered by a perception, amongst architectural historians, that Maori buildings are part of a building tradition in which purpose, design, and construction, are unchanging and solely determined by custom. Until the last two decades, architectural historians in New Zealand have largely accepted this view of Maori building, possibly because the discipline is still influenced by Banister Fletcher’s ‘tree of architecture’, which never had an Oceanic or Maori branch. In Fletcher’s influential opinion architecture could only be a Western concept. As a consequence only a few scholars have attempted to attach the word ‘Maori’ to the word ‘architecture’. Even in the revised edition of Fletcher’s History of Architecture (1996) which claims to ‘contain more information about vernacular buildings’ by contemporary contributing editors, the entry for New Zealand warns that Maori architecture ‘cannot be easily related to architecture derived from Europe’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 43 , 2000 , pp. 253 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2000

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References

Notes

1 Paul Oliver in the second volume of his 1997 publication Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World describes indigenous vernacular architects as arising ‘customarily from the communities which use the structures and are frequently owner-builder-occupiers, the process of building being learned by each successive generation’ (p. xxiii). The suggestion is that each successive generation does not attempt to develop or change the process of building, and instead only learns from and reproduces what has been made before.

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7 Davidson, Janet, Prehistory of New Zealand (Auckland, 1992), p. 153 Google Scholar. Most archaeologists believe that New Zealand was settled by Polynesians around 900 A.D., although this date is currently being revised. For many Maori the date is unimportant, since whakapapa (genealogical generations) take precedence over chronological time.

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14 Tragically in 1995 Rangtatea was destroyed by an arsonist. The church will be rebuilt and the architects in charge of the project are Bill and Perry Royal of the Christchurch-based company Royal Associates.

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26 The Manutuke church was dismantled in 1881. Some of the Rongowhakaata carvings were installed in another nearby church which was opened in 1890.

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28 Shaw, loc. cit.

29 Open pews were not a necessity in Gothic churches used by mid-nineteenth-century Maori congregations, since they preferred to sit on the floor.

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37 Kempthorne’s scoria stone churches quickly disintegrated after their opening, and had to be abandoned. Mane-Wheoki, op. cit., p. 78.

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40 The New Zealand Wars were a series of battles that raged across the North Island between 1845 and 1872. Pakeha expansion was at the root of many of the battles, which involved approximately 18,000 British troops fighting 6,000 Maori, as well as settlers fighting Maori, and pro-British Maori tribes taking advantage of Pakeha military assistance to settle old scores with enemy tribes. As the military historian, James Belich, wrote in his 1986 book The New Zealand Wars, the Wars ‘were not, as sometimes suggested, storms in a teacup or gentlemanly bouts of fisticuffs, but bitter and bloody struggles, as important to New Zealand as were the Civil Wars to England and the United States’ (p. 15).

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42 Angela Bailara & Mita Carter, ‘Te Retimana Te Korou’, in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography 1769–1869, pp. 466-67 (p. 466); Roger Maaka, 28 May 1989, in Head, op. cit., pp. 14–15; Mane-Wheoki, pers. comm. October 1998.

43 The Kingitanga, or Maori King Movement, was established in 1858, when a group of influential tribal chiefs elected a Maori ‘King’, Potatau Te Wherowhero, whose role would be to unite all Maori tribes under his leadership. However, Te Wherowhero only managed to unite the tribes of the central North Island, who became known as the ‘Kingitanga’ movement. The Kingitanga movement and the title of Maori ‘King’ (and more recently ‘Queen’) has survived by being passed down through Te Wherowhero’s descendants. The Ringatu Church was developed by Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki during the 1870s, and is a combination of Anglican teachings and Maori spirituality. Most Ringatu followers are from the central and eastern districts of the North Island.

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49 Auckland Institute & Museum neg. no. C6221.

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54 The yellow diamonds painted on Hiona had a biblical, rather than a Gothic basis, since some of Rua’s followers believed that they illustrated jewels belonging to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Binney, Judith, Mihaia (Auckland, 1990), p. 49 Google Scholar.

55 Judith Binney, pers. comm. 1993.

56 Phillipps, W. J., Maori Houses and Food Stores (Wellington, 1952), p. 34 Google Scholar; Hurinui, Pei Te, letter, Journal of the Polynesian Society, 4 (1959), pp. 393-94Google Scholar (P. 394).

57 F. I. Anderson, 1961, unpublished report, attached to Marae Building Records Form 8/17/4/1, Historic Places Trust, Wellington; E. A. Butt, ‘Meeting House of Hauhaus — History in a Deserted Village’, Weekly News, 25 January 1961, p. 8; Conway, M. J., ‘Example of Early Maori Architecture’, Building Progress, 27 (1962), p. 60 Google Scholar; R. P. Emery, ‘Te Miringa-te-Kakara …’, n.d., unpublished typescript, attached to Marae Building Records Form 8/17/4/1, Historic Places Trust, Wellington, pp. 3, 4; W. J. Phillipps, , Carved Maori Houses of the Western and Northern Areas of New Zealand (Wellington, 1955), p. 146 Google Scholar.

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59 Elsmore, Bronwyn, Manafrom Heaven (Tauranga, 1989), p. 215 Google Scholar.

60 Shaw, op. cit., pp. 26-27.

61 Best, Elsdon, Maori Religion and Mythology, 2 vols (Wellington, 1982), II, p. 93 Google Scholar; Phillipps, 1952, p. 34.

62 Emery, loc. cit.

63 Elsmore, op. cit., p. 214; Hunt, C. J., ‘Maringa [sic] Te Kakara Village’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, 1 (1959), PP. 2–7 Google Scholar (P.7).

64 Bill McKay, pers. comm. 1997; Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, ‘Work of Maori Architects adds to our Heritage’, Historic Places, Dec. (1990b), pp. 29-33 (P. 30).

65 See Hunt, op. cit., p. 3.

66 Lochhead, Ian, ‘Antipodean Gothic — Gilbert Scott, Benjamin Mountfort and the Medieval Vision in New Zealand’, XXVII Congrès International d’histoire de l’Art (Strasbourg 1992), p. 226 Google Scholar.