Ngaua Te Pae Hamuti - Rise To The Challenge: Tethering Commonality and Contrast to Create Positive Social and Environmental Change

In an effort to mitigate the ongoing impacts of hegemony in design, experienced as a result of Modernist storyline this research seeks to reconsider and recalibrate the Universal narrative. Reflecting on the dogged legacy of modernism, this research proposes that design has much to gain by exploring its past as, not one Universal history, but a series of intersecting and diverging narratives. Being place-based, in Aotearoa, New Zealand, this research begins by elucidating untold moments of intersection and divergence between mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), Pasifika ideology and design’s solitary history. Having identified these moments, this work exemplifies the impact of including more diversified understandings of the past, and the knowledge it holds for the future. In these works, design students embrace Indigenous knowledge, specifically Māori and Pasifika worldviews, to guide their methods and mindsets, and showcase the benefits of incorporating these often-overlooked approaches on both global and local scales. Their work challenges linear perceptions of time and space and helps position them in relation to the problem and the solution. This research posits that our histories shape our futures, and that design has much to learn from Indigenous worldviews, and what they offer both design pedagogy and practice by, as reflected in the 2015 Transition Design Provocation, looking to the past to create solutions in the present with future generations in mind. Ki muri ka mua - I walk backwards into the future.