Whare Tapere: A House of Storytelling in the Space of Lost Time
Written by female, award-winning Māori author Whiti Hereaka, the 2021 novel Kurangaituku reimagines the traditional pūrākau (oral narrative) of Hatupatu and the ‘terrible bird-woman’, Kurangaituku. The novel has two front covers that allow the reader’s journey to begin from either end of the codex: the light cover or the dark cover. This unique structure reflects a deeply-held Māori worldview, where time and space are fluid, ever-shifting, and interconnected. The narrative traverses the dual realms of te ao Mārama (the realm above) in one direction and Rarohenga (the realm below) in the other. Threads from te ao Mārama and Rarohenga are skilfully raranga (woven) together to shape Kurangaituku’s story; weaving is an important allegorical storytelling device in the novel and as such will be re-presented as an allegorical device in this architectural investigation.
At the beginning of both the light and dark covers, a Whare Tapere—House of Storytelling—is described; however, it is only in the middle, the ‘In-between’ layer of the book where the two tales overlap, that the Whare Tapere can be fully understood. This ‘In-between’ layer where the two stories overlap is referred to as a ‘Space of Lost Time’. Here, the Whare Tapere cycles continually from beginning to middle and end, rather than existing at a fixed point in time or space; here, time slows itself, blurring the boundaries between the seen and unseen, the known and the forgotten.
Hereaka’s work of literature uses the allegory of a House of Storytelling sited within a Space of Lost Time to challenge fixed Western notions of time and space. She uses three principal literary devices—Dualities and Oppositions, Liminality, and Temporality—to represent a cyclical temporal sequence that allows a reader to engage with the story from any direction, thereby reinforcing the te ao Māori idea of time and space as fluid, ever-shifting, and interconnected. This thesis proposes to architecturally represent this notion of fluid time and space, by exploring how an allegorical architectural project might re-present the te ao Māori concept of a House of Storytelling in the Space of Lost Time.
This design-led research investigation asks: How can the principal literary devices used by New Zealand Māori author Whiti Hereaka in her novel Kurangaituku to represent a House of Storytelling in the Space of Lost Time, be applied to a design-led research proposition and re-presented as an allegorical architectural outcome?
