Oceanic Architectural Routes: The photographic archive of Mike Austin
Oceanic Architectural Routes: The photographic archive of Mike Austin
Objectspace
13 Rose Road, Ponsonby, Auckland
3 December 2022 – 26 February 2023
Mike Austin, Bure, Vanua Levu, Fiji, 1973
Oceanic Architectural Routes presents the photographic archive of Dr Mike Austin – images taken during his travels from the late 1960s to 2006 in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Hawai‘i and Rapa Nui.
The photographs formed the basis for Austin’s architectural anthropology studies of house forms and cultures in the Oceanic region. They were also primary source materials for his popular courses ‘Oceanic Architecture’ and ‘People and Environment Studies’ at the University of Auckland School of Architecture from the 1980s until 1999, and in his later work as a supervisor of Pacific Master of Architecture students at Unitec and the University of Auckland.
The images and ideas seeded by Austin’s Oceanic architecture lectures quietly sprouted alternative roots in contemporary New Zealand architectural history. Some of these roots became routes (to borrow a metaphor from anthropologist James Clifford) – they enabled Pacific architectural customs and knowledge to connect with the vast reservoir of Indigenous knowledge worldwide, leading to the burgeoning interest in Pacific/Moana and Māori architecture today.
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