John Scott broke barriers for Māori architecture – and paved the way for future generations of Māori architects like Jade Kake.

Sometimes I get asked the question: what is Māori architecture? What is Māori, exactly, about the buildings Māori architects design – especially in the absence of koru and kowhaiwhai, whakairo and tukutuku? Ornamentation can be a significant element of Māori architecture, but in my mind, this is superficial if it’s the only thing that is Māori about the building. Maybe this is the point made by Modernism.

I think of architecture as whakapapa, connecting people and places across space and time. I think of architecture as behaviour setting – a place for cultural practices and interactions and relationships underpinned by tikanga to occur. Sometimes the most Māori aspect of a building is the floor plan, especially in the arrangement of spaces that accommodate the way we want to live our lives and use and occupy space as Māori. 

Māori architecture involves listening closely to people and land. It’s the synthesis of culture, history and aspirations, a deep knowledge and understanding of people of place. It’s in the relationships that we nurture in the process. Finally, it is Māori architecture because we are Māori.

When I think of John Scott, I think of a tūāpapa, a foundation. As Dr Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) says, Scott broke barriers for Māori architecture and architects at a time when Māori architecture had been suppressed – including through legislation that banned the construction of raupō whare, and the Tohunga Suppression Act, which banned the transfer of Māori knowledge, particularly around things that were tapu. Scott was practising during the post-war era when Māori culture and identity were discouraged and assimilation was the norm. Māori architecture and visual expression more generally had very little status or visibility in the mainstream.  

I entered architecture school in 2006, and it wasn’t until near the end of my degree that I learned there were Māori architects. I had previously understood it as a very white profession, with Indigenous architecture relegated to the domain of (inevitably white) anthropologists. Now, as a young (arguably approaching mid-career) practitioner, I’m grateful for the foundation that has been laid by John Scott and other early Māori architects, paving the way for those of us who have followed. It’s not lost on me that we are able to practice architecture openly, as Māori – something which was largely denied to earlier generations. Notwithstanding the ongoing challenges, it’s an immense privilege to be able to have our own whānua and hapū as clients and to have our culture respected and represented in the design of public buildings and spaces. 

I had a formal, very conventional architectural education. Modernism, the way it was taught when I was a student, seemed incompatible with Indigenous ways of thinking and being. Modernism rejected ornamentation, and seemed diametrically opposed to so-called “vernacular” architecture, which is what Māori and Indigenous architecture was still largely classified as at that time. It was a revelation to me to discover Māori modernists – including John Scott and Rewi Thompson – because it challenged the fundamental precepts of modernism as I understood them at the time. It was through exposure to Māori modernists like John Scott that I grew to understand that modernism is not necessarily incompatible with our cultural practices and belief systems as Māori.

Form follows function can also be applied to tikanga, with the form of our spaces following and enabling cultural protocols to occur. Visual expression of the structure is an inherent aspect of Māori architecture, which can be evidenced in newer projects such Te Noho Kotahitanga marae (carved by Lyonel Grant – Te Arawa), which utilises traditional construction techniques which mean the carved elements are structural (rather than applied). Modernism also embraces the use of new materials produced by industrial processes that created new possibilities. Contemporaneously, Māori designers are at the forefront of utilising industrial processes to create new approaches to traditional concepts. This includes John Scott’s son, designer Jacob Scott (Ngāti Kahungunu) and his use of CNC technology to generate contemporary whakairo, and architect Derek Kawiti’s (Ngāti Hine, Tūhoe) use of 3D printing and other digital fabrication technologies to produce sculptural work and building-integrated elements.  

When I think of the impact John Scott has had on modernism, and the emergence of Māori modernism and contemporary Māori architecture more generally, I think about the essential elements that have been transposed and reinterpreted within contemporary spaces. Elements like the pou. 

A pou is an element that creates the space between Ranginui and Papatūānuku, between earth and sky. The pou is embodied in the rākau, whether it’s anchored in the ground or milled for timber. More than a column, a pou is an anchor, the centre, the heart of the building. 

In my architectural education, piloti – reinforced, ground level supporting columns – featured heavily. Architects and students of architecture will no doubt be intimately familiar with the Villa Savoye in Poissy, France, designed by Le Corbusier. Piloti were significant as progress in industrial processes meant that for the first time, slender, reinforced load-bearing columns were possible. A piloti creates space, enabling open floor plans and a ‘free’ facade, the non-load bearing wall permitting more freedom in openings. 

A pou also creates space around it, but in a different way. Holding up the roof, the sky, pou creates space that radiates out from the centre. Piloti recede, but pou radiate. Futuna Chapel, that iconic building by John Scott, is centred around a pou tokomanawa. The interior of the space reminds me of Rangiātea Church in Ōtaki, built more than a hundred years prior, a series of pou that hold up the sky. In Futuna, the pou is at the centre: the radiating struts branch out like a tree, filling the space and supporting the canopy, the interlocking gables of the roof. Jacob Scott said that as a column can be a pou, a person can also be a pou. John Scott’s legacy is in the way he has created not only spaces, but space for future generations, a tall kauri creating the light in which we are able to exist and flourish. 

We need a new approach to policymaking that gives full expression to Te Tiriti o Waitangi as Aotearoa’s founding document, and Mātauranga Māori as our country’s first knowledge system, write Tahu Kukutai and Jacinta Ruru.

Māku anō e hanga tōku nei whare …

I will build my own house …

So begins a tongikura or proverbial saying of Kīngi Tāwhiao, the second Māori King, made after the devastating invasion and confiscation of Waikato lands. To rebuild, Tāwhiao sought trees not typically used for construction, and urged his people to find sustenance from plants only eaten in lean times.

More than a call for self-sufficiency, Tāwhiao’s tongi was a proclamation of mana Māori motuhake. To survive and thrive, Māori futures needed to be fashioned by clever and inventive Māori hands.

This vision of Māori-led flourishing is front and centre of a new report released today, Te Pūtahitanga: A Tiriti-led science-policy approach for Aotearoa New Zealand. In it we join other Māori researchers to call for an approach to policymaking that gives full expression to Te Tiriti o Waitangi as Aotearoa’s founding document, and Mātauranga Māori as our country’s first knowledge system.

The report interrogates, from an unapologetically Māori vantage point, how science and evidence shapes policymaking. It finds that the current approach marginalises Māori experts, knowledge and priorities, with adverse consequences for Māori and Aotearoa generally. It argues for a Tiriti-led approach that is equity focused, unrelenting in its drive for positive Māori outcomes, more “bottom up” than “top down”, and that draws on Māori community knowledge and expertise in far more timely and connected ways.

The report comes amid ongoing concerns about the exclusion of Māori and Pacific expertise from science advice and key decision-making roles. As the government pushes on with its post-Covid “recover, reset and rebuild”, a system-level response that mobilises and invests in our unique strengths is crucial.

In Aotearoa we averted the mass mortality that occurred in so many other countries, in part because our government took science seriously. But we have emerged from the pandemic with starker inequities than when we entered lockdown, a housing sector still in crisis, and the need for urgent climate action barely registering on the national radar. Business as usual has wreaked havoc on the lives of far too many New Zealanders.

It’s a good thing that new legislation and policy is starting to catch up to the enormous potential for us all if we fully embrace Te Tiriti. Te Tiriti offers a powerful framework for connecting systems and communities of knowledge in ways that are mutually beneficial and future focused. New law, such as the Public Service Act 2020, requires the public service to support the Crown in its relationships with Māori under te Tiriti.

We believe this must mean working together “as equals” in a relational way. This new way of working together should  support the duties of the Crown to  exercise kāwanatanga, and Māori to exercise rangatiratanga. While Crown agencies are increasingly comfortable with the notion of partnership in a relational sphere, their understanding of and capability to engage with rangatiratanga is largely untested. Yet, for Māori, the space for self-determined development is critical.

For the intent of Te Tiriti to be brought into the science-policy interface – and the RSI system more broadly – changes at the systems level are needed. We need to move beyond symbolic gestures to meet responsibilities in transparent and tangible ways. To that end our report argues for both partnership (relational) and autonomous (rangatiratanga) approaches at the science-policy interface to drive positive Māori outcomes. We make five priority recommendations:

1. Develop Tiriti-based guidelines for RSI funding.
2. Appoint chief Māori science advisers in key government departments.
3. Strengthen monitoring of Māori RSI investment and activity.
4. Establish an autonomous Mātauranga Māori Commission.
5. Develop regionally based Te Ao Māori policy hubs.

The report writers are well placed to make this call. Between us we have many decades of expertise and experience as researchers and advisers in Te Ao Māori, and in Pākehā-dominated institutions and settings. We have been up close and personal with the science-policy interface and know it isn’t working for Māori, for Pacific peoples, or many other marginalised communities.

We have all had the frustrating (and lonely) experience of being the only Māori around a high-powered table, or being part of Māori advisory groups whose recommendations are ignored, or diluted beyond recognition.  We have sat in meetings with senior officials and academics whose understanding of Te Ao Māori is tenuous, at best, and whose lived experiences are worlds away from the Māori and Pacific peoples whose livelihoods are shaped by their decisions. Like the many who have come before us (too many to acknowledge here), we care because we know what is at stake – it is the wellbeing of our whānau, our mokopuna and their mokopuna, our whenua, our rivers and oceans, our reo, our identities.

And despite hōhā narratives about “breaking the cycle”, we know that things weren’t always this way. Many of the issues that disproportionately impact Māori – whether poverty, domestic violence, or over-incarceration – are not natural or normal. Rather, they are the very predictable outcomes of a system that has systemically sought to disempower and dispossess us, as Māori. And just as these problems were manmade, so too can they be un-made. But it requires – among other things – the right people asking the right questions to get the right solutions. And it involves genuine power sharing in a relationship of equals.

There are signs of positive change with initiatives such as the newly-announced Māori Health Agency, Mana Orite agreements such as those between the Iwi Chairs Forum and Statistics NZ, and a prime minister’s chief science adviser who has publicly supported a more inclusive science-policy approach that recognises the importance of mātauranga Māori alongside western science.

Ultimately, however, the power to set this new science-policy agenda, to implement and benefit from it, requires Māori leadership. History has shown us, time and again, that transformational change for Māori must be Māori-led. Kōhanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa Māori were all uniquely Māori solutions, driven by and for Māori. And, as we are now seeing with te reo revitalization, these bold visions of Māori flourishing have also produced wider benefits for Aotearoa and New Zealanders generally. The new Te Urewera model for caring for land is another empowering example of what can happen when we trust Māori and mātauranga Māori.

Resilient. Inclusive. Generative. Unambiguously rooted in this whenua.

This is the whare we could all seek to fashion.

Tahu Kukutai is professor of demography, Te Rūnanga Tātari Tatauranga (National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis) at the University of Waikato. Professor Jacinta Ruru is co-director, Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence.