The institutional frameworks within which we conceive, design, construct, inhabit and manage our ... more The institutional frameworks within which we conceive, design, construct, inhabit and manage our built environments are widely acknowledged to be key factors contributing to converging ecological crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and social inequity at a global scale. Yet, our ability to respond to these emergencies remains largely circumscribed by educational and professional agendas inherited from 20th-century Western paradigms. As the crises intensify, there is a compelling case for radical change in the educational and professional structures of the built environment disciplines. This paper presents a work-in-progress examination of an emergent architecture programme at Te Wānanga Aronui O Tāmaki Makau Rau/Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Aotearoa New Zealand. The program is within Huri Te Ao/the School of Future Environments, a transdisciplinary entity formed in 2020 to integrate research and teaching across Architecture, Built Enviro...
This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well‐being of the more‐than‐hum... more This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well‐being of the more‐than‐human might better enable Indigenous peoples' capacity to live‐well‐with and care for our more‐than‐human whanaunga (kin). The discussion positions Indigenous more‐than‐human ontologies as a cultural framework that supplants human‐centrism with a focus on holistic ecological well‐being. The paper considers how a culture of holistic ecological well‐being might be spatially emplaced through well‐being‐led planning tools that ground these ontologies in neighbourhoods, cities and wider afield. Currently settler‐colonial spatial governance and planning structures hold dominion in Aotearoa New Zealand, inscribing cultural territories fundamentally other to Indigenous norms. Yet the country's Te Tiriti o Waitangi contracts for tino rangatiratanga (Māori sovereignty), and to meet the Tiriti it is imperative that current spatial governance approaches swiftly converge with Indigenous ethical ...
Where does life live? What is alive? In modernist/dualist thinking, we might assume that life liv... more Where does life live? What is alive? In modernist/dualist thinking, we might assume that life lives through cause and effect—an acting of someone onto something. When conceived through an Indigenous-Māori concept of mauri—life vitality— the immanence of living as a relational field is revealed. An ethical imperative to sustain the wellness of the life-field, mauri-ora, is concurrent with the concept of mauri. This paper philosophically probes the immanent and ethical conditions of this life-field and its relational sustenance as the very ground for design thinking. Here, I explore an architectural project, Te Uru Taumatua, as a case for thinking through mauri-ora (life-field) as immanent ethics in relation to an evocation of ecological vitality. This project becomes a bridge for thinking immanent connections across Indigenous-Maori and contemporary ecological thinking. This paper argues that architecture’s role as an Anthropocenic actor creates the conditions necessary to instantiate socio-ecologically situated immanent ethics as design ethics. What is fundamental to this approach is to reveal how ecological design is a thinking manifest here, in this case study, as the relation of mauri to mauri-ora. Here, Te Uru Taumatua helps to explore an understanding of mauri-ora as an immanent ethics which bridges (design) thinking and practice.
There is an intersection of landscape and interior within pre-contact Maori building practice. Th... more There is an intersection of landscape and interior within pre-contact Maori building practice. Throughout New Zealand the land bears imprints from such interventions as the terracing of pa1 to form defensible, habitable zones; the recessing of rua-kai2 to form storage vessels within the ground; the indenting of umu3; and the imprinting of the interiors of whare puni4. This paper explores the manner in which this excavational practice destabilises the clear distinctions between the Western spatial disciplines of interior design, landscape architecture, and architecture. The paper speculates that this carving practice may offer opportunities for intercultural, interdisciplinary space making. This exploration moves between cultures, between perceptions of landscape and whenua, between landscape, interior and architectural disciplines. These betweens are theorised as a practice, as a mode of making contemporary space which draws from the history and specificity of this land and indigeno...
Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research h... more Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of valuable organic matter. There is current debate about what practices and infrastructure to invest in to better manage and use organic waste. We highlight the diversity of existing organic waste practices and infrastructures, focusing on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. We show how debates about organic waste practices and infrastructure connect across three themes: waste subjectivities, collective action in place and language.
At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing... more At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing-led governance frameworks that engage with both human and more-than-human wellbeing. Attempts to incorporate wellbeing indices into wellbeing-led governance include the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the Gross National Happiness index of Bhutan, and a variety of emerging wellbeing-led governance frameworks in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some of these frameworks have begun to include more-than-human wellbeing indices in their toolkit, but like many geographers and Indigenous scholars, we are wary of the dangers of universalising and abstractionist ‘indexology’ ( Ratuva, 2016 ). In this paper, we review wellbeing-led governance frameworks with a view to more-than-human wellbeing and Indigenous knowledge. We outline an emerging pluriversal and prefigurative project where Indigenous scholars engage with partners in co-creation methods in...
In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to resear... more In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to research, centred on Indigenous Māori knowledge, while opening space for cross-cultural perspectives and co-creation methods. We address the responses authored by Meg Parsons, Wendy Steele and Wendy Harcourt, starting by summarising what we took from each contribution. We discuss key questions raised by each of the authors in the context of the evolving research programme and broader developments on wellbeing governance in Aotearoa. Pluriversal and prefigurative experimental approaches are key to testing and iteratively advancing the research agenda in disruptive times.
This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well-being of the more-than-hum... more This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well-being of the more-than-human might better enable Indigenous peoples' capacity to live-well-with and care for our more-than-human whanaunga (kin). The discussion positions Indigenous more-than-human ontologies as a cultural framework that supplants human-centrism with a focus on holistic ecological well-being. The paper considers how a culture of holistic ecological well-being might be spatially emplaced through well-being-led planning tools that ground these ontologies in neighbourhoods, cities and wider afield. Currently settler-colonial spatial governance and planning structures hold dominion in Aotearoa New Zealand, inscribing cultural territories fundamentally other to Indigenous norms. Yet the country's Te Tiriti o Waitangi contracts for tino rangatiratanga (Māori sovereignty), and to meet the Tiriti it is imperative that current spatial governance approaches swiftly converge with Indigenous ethical practices for mauri ora holistic well-being. There is much at stake. The Petrocene - our current era of ecological breakdown, accelerated by a rapacious petrocapitalism - is a time of mass death of our more-than-human whanaunga (kin).
In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to resear... more In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to research, centred on Indigenous Māori knowledge, while opening space for cross-cultural perspectives and co-creation methods. We address the responses authored by Meg Parsons, Wendy Steele and Wendy Harcourt, starting by summarising what we took from each contribution. We discuss key questions raised by each of the authors in the context of the evolving research programme and broader developments on wellbeing governance in Aotearoa. Pluriversal and prefigurative experimental approaches are key to testing and iteratively advancing the research agenda in disruptive times.
Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research h... more Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of valuable organic matter. There is current debate about what practices and infrastructure to invest in to better manage and use organic waste. We highlight the diversity of existing organic waste practices and infrastructures, focusing on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. We show how debates about organic waste practices and infrastructure connect across three themes: waste subjectivities, collective action in place and language.
The institutional frameworks within which we conceive, design, construct, inhabit and manage our ... more The institutional frameworks within which we conceive, design, construct, inhabit and manage our built environments are widely acknowledged to be key factors contributing to converging ecological crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and social inequity at a global scale. Yet, our ability to respond to these emergencies remains largely circumscribed by educational and professional agendas inherited from 20th-century Western paradigms. As the crises intensify, there is a compelling case for radical change in the educational and professional structures of the built environment disciplines. This paper presents a work-in-progress examination of an emergent architecture programme at Te Wānanga Aronui O Tāmaki Makau Rau/Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Aotearoa New Zealand. The program is within Huri Te Ao/the School of Future Environments, a transdisciplinary entity formed in 2020 to integrate research and teaching across Architecture, Built Enviro...
This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well‐being of the more‐than‐hum... more This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well‐being of the more‐than‐human might better enable Indigenous peoples' capacity to live‐well‐with and care for our more‐than‐human whanaunga (kin). The discussion positions Indigenous more‐than‐human ontologies as a cultural framework that supplants human‐centrism with a focus on holistic ecological well‐being. The paper considers how a culture of holistic ecological well‐being might be spatially emplaced through well‐being‐led planning tools that ground these ontologies in neighbourhoods, cities and wider afield. Currently settler‐colonial spatial governance and planning structures hold dominion in Aotearoa New Zealand, inscribing cultural territories fundamentally other to Indigenous norms. Yet the country's Te Tiriti o Waitangi contracts for tino rangatiratanga (Māori sovereignty), and to meet the Tiriti it is imperative that current spatial governance approaches swiftly converge with Indigenous ethical ...
Where does life live? What is alive? In modernist/dualist thinking, we might assume that life liv... more Where does life live? What is alive? In modernist/dualist thinking, we might assume that life lives through cause and effect—an acting of someone onto something. When conceived through an Indigenous-Māori concept of mauri—life vitality— the immanence of living as a relational field is revealed. An ethical imperative to sustain the wellness of the life-field, mauri-ora, is concurrent with the concept of mauri. This paper philosophically probes the immanent and ethical conditions of this life-field and its relational sustenance as the very ground for design thinking. Here, I explore an architectural project, Te Uru Taumatua, as a case for thinking through mauri-ora (life-field) as immanent ethics in relation to an evocation of ecological vitality. This project becomes a bridge for thinking immanent connections across Indigenous-Maori and contemporary ecological thinking. This paper argues that architecture’s role as an Anthropocenic actor creates the conditions necessary to instantiate socio-ecologically situated immanent ethics as design ethics. What is fundamental to this approach is to reveal how ecological design is a thinking manifest here, in this case study, as the relation of mauri to mauri-ora. Here, Te Uru Taumatua helps to explore an understanding of mauri-ora as an immanent ethics which bridges (design) thinking and practice.
There is an intersection of landscape and interior within pre-contact Maori building practice. Th... more There is an intersection of landscape and interior within pre-contact Maori building practice. Throughout New Zealand the land bears imprints from such interventions as the terracing of pa1 to form defensible, habitable zones; the recessing of rua-kai2 to form storage vessels within the ground; the indenting of umu3; and the imprinting of the interiors of whare puni4. This paper explores the manner in which this excavational practice destabilises the clear distinctions between the Western spatial disciplines of interior design, landscape architecture, and architecture. The paper speculates that this carving practice may offer opportunities for intercultural, interdisciplinary space making. This exploration moves between cultures, between perceptions of landscape and whenua, between landscape, interior and architectural disciplines. These betweens are theorised as a practice, as a mode of making contemporary space which draws from the history and specificity of this land and indigeno...
Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research h... more Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of valuable organic matter. There is current debate about what practices and infrastructure to invest in to better manage and use organic waste. We highlight the diversity of existing organic waste practices and infrastructures, focusing on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. We show how debates about organic waste practices and infrastructure connect across three themes: waste subjectivities, collective action in place and language.
At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing... more At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing-led governance frameworks that engage with both human and more-than-human wellbeing. Attempts to incorporate wellbeing indices into wellbeing-led governance include the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the Gross National Happiness index of Bhutan, and a variety of emerging wellbeing-led governance frameworks in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some of these frameworks have begun to include more-than-human wellbeing indices in their toolkit, but like many geographers and Indigenous scholars, we are wary of the dangers of universalising and abstractionist ‘indexology’ ( Ratuva, 2016 ). In this paper, we review wellbeing-led governance frameworks with a view to more-than-human wellbeing and Indigenous knowledge. We outline an emerging pluriversal and prefigurative project where Indigenous scholars engage with partners in co-creation methods in...
In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to resear... more In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to research, centred on Indigenous Māori knowledge, while opening space for cross-cultural perspectives and co-creation methods. We address the responses authored by Meg Parsons, Wendy Steele and Wendy Harcourt, starting by summarising what we took from each contribution. We discuss key questions raised by each of the authors in the context of the evolving research programme and broader developments on wellbeing governance in Aotearoa. Pluriversal and prefigurative experimental approaches are key to testing and iteratively advancing the research agenda in disruptive times.
This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well-being of the more-than-hum... more This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well-being of the more-than-human might better enable Indigenous peoples' capacity to live-well-with and care for our more-than-human whanaunga (kin). The discussion positions Indigenous more-than-human ontologies as a cultural framework that supplants human-centrism with a focus on holistic ecological well-being. The paper considers how a culture of holistic ecological well-being might be spatially emplaced through well-being-led planning tools that ground these ontologies in neighbourhoods, cities and wider afield. Currently settler-colonial spatial governance and planning structures hold dominion in Aotearoa New Zealand, inscribing cultural territories fundamentally other to Indigenous norms. Yet the country's Te Tiriti o Waitangi contracts for tino rangatiratanga (Māori sovereignty), and to meet the Tiriti it is imperative that current spatial governance approaches swiftly converge with Indigenous ethical practices for mauri ora holistic well-being. There is much at stake. The Petrocene - our current era of ecological breakdown, accelerated by a rapacious petrocapitalism - is a time of mass death of our more-than-human whanaunga (kin).
In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to resear... more In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to research, centred on Indigenous Māori knowledge, while opening space for cross-cultural perspectives and co-creation methods. We address the responses authored by Meg Parsons, Wendy Steele and Wendy Harcourt, starting by summarising what we took from each contribution. We discuss key questions raised by each of the authors in the context of the evolving research programme and broader developments on wellbeing governance in Aotearoa. Pluriversal and prefigurative experimental approaches are key to testing and iteratively advancing the research agenda in disruptive times.
Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research h... more Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of valuable organic matter. There is current debate about what practices and infrastructure to invest in to better manage and use organic waste. We highlight the diversity of existing organic waste practices and infrastructures, focusing on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. We show how debates about organic waste practices and infrastructure connect across three themes: waste subjectivities, collective action in place and language.
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Papers by Amanda Yates