Drawing ground

Aotearoa now recognizes non-human natural entities as having personhood: Te Urewera, Whanganui Awa, Taranaki Maunga. My motivation in this work is to understand my relationship to the living, breathing ground, to draw out architecture through a collaboration between me and Ground as a person.

As Pākehā, this relationship feels turbulent as I don’t whakapapa to a particular soil in Aotearoa. I have explored my relationship with the Ground through drawing, as a way to expand and reveal the turbulent currents in my position, and these have become infused in graphite on paper.

Drawing Ground is a design-led research project with abstract drawing investigations exploring connections between Ground and my body, culminating in the re-sketching of the historic Dominion Museum: the building’s solidity is dissolved and is reimagined through intense, turbulent sketches, prompting thinking about the Ground beneath the building. The architecture that results captures a journey of belonging, entangled relations and identity through drawing. The design encourages an ontological relational shift in thinking toward the Ground and proposes an alternate way of collaborating with the Ground through a process of design.

Throughout this entire process critical reflection on the various drawings and design iterations inform a discussion of the research focus and question. This thesis aims to speculate on architecture’s role within this complex relationship, how it can be agential in an ontological shift for Pākehā, and how it might compel a relational approach to architecture through radical design practice.