Design Collaboration with a Maori Community

Community based architectural education projects are key components of sustainable community development. In Aotearoa/New Zealand architectural education has been slow to acknowledge the needs of Maori communities and slower still to enter into collaborative relationships with rural Maori communities. Where Maori culture, values and architecture remained outside of mainstream architectural education, rural communities, without access to culturally skilled practitioners were excluded from the ability to plan for and provide opportunities for future generations. Coupled with this by the 1980s, unsustainable rural economies had left communities destitute of their identity and, by the exploitation of their land and labour, forced increasing reliance on a range of government benefits. This paper introduces architectural education in a Maori cultural context with specific reference to the hands-on community based project Te Whaiti, developed by Te Hononga - The Centre for Maori Architecture & Appropriate Technologies - and the Te Whaiti / Minginui community in 2004. The conclusions highlight a series of understandings which have already and continue to be capable of informing future collaborations between schools of architecture and rural Maori. Conference theme: Design education.