Return to Papatūānuku: Investigating divine connection in an urban Aotearoa context through intersecting eco-feminist, anti-memorial, and indigenous landscape architectural knowledge
Eco-feminism and Mātauranga Māori are emergent research realms, becoming more prevalent internationally and within Aotearoa respectively, their common grounds based in ecological restoration, re-indigenising processes, fourth-wave feminism, and mana wāhine movements. This reciprocity between people and land reveal a gap in intersecting knowledge which landscape architects can address. Hence this thesis aims to research through design the ways landscape architects can foster divine connection between people and the environment within their cultural context.
Aotearoa New Zealand experienced abrupt adaptation of the whenua (land) due to human settlement within a relatively small period compared to other colonised states, inflicting irreversible change. Matairangi Mount Victoria, located within Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, is a direct physical reflection of this history, being an amalgamation of many presenting cultures and time periods within one geographically confined place. Through the whakapapa investigations of mnemonic effect, anti-memorials, and feminist urban theory within an atua framework, a process of historical analysis was utilized. At a range of wider scales, alongside personal tactile experimentation and hīkoi-based (walking-based) photographic fieldwork, this developed a personal process which emerged an innate divine feminine connection to the whenua within landscape architectural practice.
Founded in a he awa whiria (braided river approach), a series of design typologies and strategic framework of Mount Victoria suburb unfolded. Made up of a family of typologies across four characterising streets encouraging soil movement, ecological restoration, de-paving, and revegetating native climbers, the urban environment encouraged a cohabitative process. These findings reiterate the importance for landscape architects to act as facilitators of public kaitiakitanga (guardianship), through the growing manaakitanga between the public, private, and whenua intergenerationally. This duty of care could hence be passed between designer, casual user, and personally connected dweller, to honour the whenua as she is.