ARCHTHEO ’15 IX. THEORY AND HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE CONFERENCE PROCEEDING

DAKAM PUBLISHING CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS NOVEMBER 5-7, 2015 ISTANBUL

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DAKAM YAYINLARI

November 2015, İstanbul.

www.dakam.org Firuzağa Mah. Boğazkesen Cad., Çangar İş Merkezi 36/ 2, 34425, Beyoğlu, İstanbul

ARCHTHEO ’15 / Ix. Theory and History of Architecture Conference Proceedings November 5-7, 2015, İstanbul organized by DAKAM (Eastern Mediterranean Academic Research Center)

Edited by: Hande Tulum Cover Design: D/GD (DAKAM Graphic Design) Print: Metin Copy Plus Mollafenari Mah., Türkocağı ACad. 3/1, Mahmutpaşa/Istanbul, Turkey ISBN: 978-605-9207-10-2

SPACES OF APPEARANCE: ATMOSPHERES AND ECSTASİES ACROSS CULTURES A.-CHR. ENGELS-SCHWARZPAUL Professor in Spatial Design, AUT University Abstract Questions concerning the spaces and protocols in which cultures could encounter each other in co -existence or challenge (or how the co-production of intercultural space could take place) are becoming increasingly urgent and remain to be addressed in architectural theory. Case studies from cities in the Pacific Rim show that the successful intercultural production of space can form and consolidate migrant or indigenous communities internally and initiate exchanges with the mainstream that can be beneficial for both. This paper first introduces the concepts of atmosphere, aura and ecstasy. Together with the Māori notion of mauri and the Japanese ki, atmospheres and ecstasies will then serve as lenses to examine two institutional cross cultural sites in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Waipapa Marae and the Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland. Waipapa Marae, established in the late 1980s, marks an important point in the country’s comi ng-to-terms with its bi-cultural constitution. The Fale Pasifika, opened fifteen years later, signals the ex -colony’s acceptance of its geographical and geo-political location in the Pacific and its special relationships with Pacific immigrants. Both sites soon became spaces of appearance, where things and people could stand out and affect their environment differently. Both projects started with a focus on the internal needs of Māori and Pacific groups of students and academics who, involving their source communities, developed and consolidated their mana (power, authority) over the planning and occupation of the sites and buildings. Soon, both communities opened their facilities and events to fellow New Zealanders and international visitors. For some years now, these places are in high demand by the University and other public institutions as venues for the reception of prestigious international visitors. This is largely due to the well -developed local atmospheres, which, more than most places in the city, establishes a visible and palpable link to place – in Aotearoa and the Pacific. The paper will identify and explore atmospheres and ecstasies supporting these processes to suggest aspects that might be applicable beyond the local situation in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Introduction Questions concerning the spaces and protocols in which cultures could encounter each other in co -existence or challenge, that is, how the co-production of intercultural space could take place, are becoming increasingly urgent globally and remain to be addressed in architectural theory (Jenner, 2014 p.136). In New World cities on the Pacific Rim, like Auckland, these questions are practically tested in communities that elude territorial controls of difference (Bedford, Ho, & Lidgard, 2000 p.5). At the same time, Māori as tangata whenua (indigenous people) have reclaimed rights to land and cultural and natural resources through Waitangi Tribunal hearings and advanced the partnership between Māori and Pākehā (Eurocentric settlers) that was envisaged in the foundin g Treaty. The hearings developed intercultural principles that may be relevant for questions of indigenous and immigrant rights and entitlements in Europe (see Bedford et al., 2000 pp.9-10) – albeit under quite different dynamics. These processes demonstrate the importance of relationships in the production of space, and particularly when it involves different cultures. This paper first introduces the concepts of atmospheres and ecstasies as German philosopher, Gernot Böhme has articulated them and then use them as lenses to examine two institutional cross -cultural sites in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Waipapa Marae and the Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland. A Māori marae, “the most central of all Maori institutions” (Tapsell, 2002 p.141) is built around the marae ātea, an open meeting space where guests are welcomed and whaikorero (speeches, debates) can occur. Minimally, the buildings include a wharenui or whare hui (large or meeting house) and a whare kai (eating house). In the Pacific, too, a malae is a communal or sacred

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place, and the Samoan fale tele (great or council house) also borders on the open ground of a malae, as part of an ensemble of houses with separate functions. In Aotearoa and the Pacific, “[t]he marae is a tried and tested institution designed to negotiate crises” (164). For its ability to produce encounters between people and their past and present, John Terrell (curator of the Chicago Field Museum) has called the marae “New Zealand’s greatest gift to the world” (Terrell, Wisse, & Philipp, 2007 p.109). These encounters, I suggest, are cruci ally supported by what Böhme would call atmospheres and ecstasies. Some aspects of these encounters might be applicable beyond the local situation in Aotearoa/New Zealand, to produce spaces of appearance where things and people can stand out in new ways. In-between Atmosphere, aura and ecstasy belong to a cluster of almost interchangeable terms that describe phenomena of in between, the emanations of people and things, and the ways in which they affect space. They unfold a discursive realm that was neglected in an architectural discourse focused on abstract space and formal qualities which, so far, had to borrow terms from music, painting or sculpture to capture phenomena outside abstraction and formalism. The art of space – not of Euclidian but of corporea l space, that is, the space in which we are – relies heavily on atmospheres, according to Böhme. Rather than “something relational”, atmospheres are ”the relation itself” (2001 p.54). By contrast, Western concepts of in-between are based on centuries of thinking Being in terms of substances or things. Things, in this tradition, are determined and distinguished from others by their properties (form, colour, smell). In this differentiation or separation, a thing “is generally conceived in its closure” (Böhme, 2013 p.32) so that, not surprisingly, architects tend to think of the production of space in terms of tangibly built forms, enveloping spaces for specific, different purposes. The impasse in Western thought concerning cross - or intercultural in-betweenness, and the difficulty to think phenomena like indeterminacy, impermanence, ambivalence, in-betweenness and empty space, also result from a peculiar subject-object relationship in Western metaphysics since Aristotle. In this tradition, in-between can only be conceived as a dependent relationship between entities, without a character of its own (2001 p.59). Atmospheres, with their “peculiar intermediary position […] between subject and object”, are consequently difficult to determine (Böhme, 1993 p.118). One exception in the Western tradition is Benjamin’s work on aura, which Böhme takes as one of his starting points. In science, quantum mechanics and field theories have principally opened Western thought towards other cultures’ very different ontologies (Böhme, 1999 p.13-4). Böhme himself challenges the split between subject and object in Western thinking by conceiving of atmosphere as the original medium from which subject and object are first differentiated. He has keenly observed architectural projects for many years and followed Japanese theorists’ work on ki to explore its affinity with atmosphere. Ki (air, atmosphere, heart, mind, spirit, mood, feelings) is deeply entrenched in Japanese everyday culture. Its etymology, like atmosphere’s, references cosmological and meteorological contexts and, as something “in the air”, ki is intensely in-between (Böhme, 2006 p.37). Neither personal and interior, nor even specific to anything or anyone, undivided ki belongs to and affects more than one (Böhme, 1998b p.236-237). In the Pacific, mauri (or mauli) is the life force inherent in everything, “the essential quality and vitality of a being or entity”. It protects the hau, “an individual’s characteristic vitality or breath of life” (Salmond, 2003 p.238). Without “radical disjuncture between mind and matter, thought and emotion, subject and object”, “everything is animated by hau tupu and hau ora, the winds of growth and life, [so that] animate and inanimate phenomena are not distinguished” (Salmond, 2012 p.120). Humans exist on a pae (threshold) between “sky and earth, life and death, light and dark“(Salmond, 2003 p.238) – within this relational ontology, even binary expressions are fundamentally related to an original whole “across a liminal zone”, and thresholds are vital (Salmond, 2012 p.137). Sharing a common life force leads to different ways of knowing the world, so that in the Pacific, for instance, a spiritual affiliation of Māori with the land leads “to a different interpretation of architecture relative to the site” ("Rewi Thompson architect", 1995 p.25) than from a Western, commercial perspective. In Māori cosmology, “the same fundamental forces gave form and energy to all matter” (Salmond, 2003 p.238). Atmosphere is conceptually closely related to such plural, relational and diffusive concepts. Its experiential, sitespecific quality and generative character can help re-conceptualise the co-presence of all participants in intercultural spatial production. As the primary reality, atmosphere excites common states between subjects and objects (Böhme, 2001 p.54) so that it offers, from within Western philosophy, an alternative to the substance ontology underpinning most of Western architectural theory and practice. One of the precursors of Böhme’s concept of atmosphere is Benjamin’s work on aura, a “s trange tissue of space and time” (Benjamin, 1989/2008 p.23), particularly in the second version of “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” (1935).

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Emanating from natural objects, aura constitutes a relationship between perceiver and perceived, in which an “indeterminate, spatially diffused quality of feeling” encompasses both (Böhme, 2013 p.27). As one breathes aura (breeze in Latin and breath in Greek) and absorbs it into one’s body, aura invisibly and intangibly intertwines the body with its environment in space and time (Takamura, 2011 p.143). The corporeal aspects of sight and touch intersect, and the diffusion and infusion of self and world initiates an attentiveness entailing perceptibility, perhaps like the collective consciousness that emanates from a group and governs individuals’ consciousness in times of change (Anderson, 2009 p.79). Aura and atmospheres, then, suggest ways of relating to the world beyond “the pervasive and dehabilitating split between subject and object which scars modernity” (Latham, 1999 p.466). As Benjamin writes elsewhere, the experience of aura relies on “the transposition of a response common in human relationships to the relationship between the inanimate or natural object and man. ... To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return” (1939/1969 p.188). Aura and atmospheres arise from people and things; atmospheres are neither objective nor subjective but “the shared reality of the perceiver and the perceived” (Böhme, 2013 p.34). How this reality is conceived, however, will impact on perception and spatial practices. As Terry Evens explains, if basic particulars are taken as the beginning of reality, an unequivocal division is introduced that assumes pure boundaries – separating without connecting. As a result, Western common sense reality is “entitative rather than relative, and dualistic rather than gradualisti c” and defaults to “taking for granted basic particulars but not the relations between them” (Evens, 2012 p.7). As long as we believe this received notion of reality to be “exhaustive and uniquely correct”, we cannot “take full advantage of the ethnographic encounter with otherness” (5) in which we could learn about different ways of perceiving the world. Whether, for example, one perceives the other as closed or ecstatic and, further, whether one’s perception is ecstatic or enclosed (that is, whether one shares in the world or looks at it from isolation), makes a significant difference to the experience of the world. By contrast with the differentiation and separation of things according to their qualities (by what makes them different from other things), ecstasies are ways in which things affect space, in other words, what they emanate. At the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition, life and the principle of life were ecstatic . For Aristotle, a perceiving being was beside itself, it subsisted in the passage of elements and as part of a generative chain. Much later, Martin Heidegger accorded an ecstatic mode of being to human beings only. Today, Böhme considers ecstasies as general forms of presence again, so that a thing, for example, can characteristically step out of itself. As exploring humans, we experience these forms as things that are present to us. However, we are no worldless subjects but embodied beings, with whom the presence of things can interfere. For the spatiality of things goes beyond the interior space they enclose, including the outside into which they ecstatically step. As ecstatic beings, they need to be understood in their tension between openness and closur e and their potential for excitation: while things have a permanent basic presence, in contrast with appearances, the fact that they can step out of themselves renders them indeterminate and excitable. The emanations of things, humans and environmental constellations ‘tinge’ atmospheres as spaces, co-constitute them as part of an inclusive medium or primary reality from which people and things are first differentiated and which relates them after their separation. Insofar as the co-presence of perceiver and perceived relates environmental qualities and individual disposition, creating an atmospheric in-between in which the encounter with the world first becomes possible, Böhme’s conception of atmosphere leans towards something similar to Māori’s spiritual c onnection with the land. Further, the common etymological reference of atmosphere and mauri to breath (via aura and hau), and the conceptual apparatus clustering around ki, suggest ways of thinking that avoid the European antagonisms between human culture and alien nature, or individual and society, and show that the unproductive dualisms (e.g., individual society) and dichotomies (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism) are not necessarily universal from a global perspective (Hamaguchi, 1997 p.57). To put it very broadly, the conceptual models of atmospheres and ecstasies, ki and mauri offer alternatives to the Western conceptions of intercultural space production and use prevailing in current theory and practice of architecture. Their potential is relevant to any production of cr oss-cultural space. Indigenous footholds Two Pacific indigenous footholds from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Waipapa Marae and the Fale Pasifika complex at the Auckland University, show how a more ecstatic and atmospheric view of co -existence in a tertiary institution creates conditions of autonomy and hospitality that makes them successful for Māori and Pacific people in the institution. The connection with place through mauri and between people through hau also makes them both

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sought after places for the hosting of visitors. Both spatial ensembles show how Māori and Pacific cultures deploy sophisticated procedures to produce and change spatial moods and modes. Changing atmospheres can modulate one spacetime constellation into another, altering the mode of appearance of a space without touching it physically. Historically, the opening of Waipapa Marae in 1988 and of the Fale Pasifika complex in 2004 mark the fruition of postcolonial struggles and a partial coming to terms of the majority of the population with the country’s bi- and multicultural nature. The special relationship between tangata whenua, the Māori Indigenous population, and the European settlers is founded in the Treaty of Waitangi. That with various immigrant settler populations is more a work in progress.

Figure 1. Waipapa Marae with tomokanga (gateway) in foreground and Tane-nui-aRangi wharenui across the marae ātea. Photo: Matiu Carr When Waipapa Marae first opened, the few Māori students at New Zealand universities often felt like interlopers. Dr. Ella Henry, now senior lecturer at AUT’s Te Ara Poutama Māori Faculty remembers how the marae provided them “with a refuge and a home in the city. It spoke volumes to us that we had a place, and that place was welcoming and that place was ours” (Henry, 2013). The marae complex, with Tane-nui-a-Rangi the wharenui and Reipae the wharekai (dining hall), is located right next to the university’s Department of Māori Studies. One of the first areas for Māori to assert rangatiratanga (selfdetermination) was in education, and educational institutions were amongst the first to assent to Māori demands for spaces that were run by Māori, addressing Māori concerns for (mostly) Māori audiences. (Morrison, 1999 pp.40, 65). The complex was built to provide an environment for teaching and research in Māori Studies and to encourage greater Māori participation at the University. Māori Studies was beginning to teach and research under their own paradigms, rather than those of the established ethnological study of mostly colonised subjects. Built on the abandoned rugby field in a marginal space of the university, Waipapa Marae became the centre for the development of kaupapa Māori (Māori principles for research), where a weak power could consolidate and re-insert the physical and intellectual world of the University into a distinctly Māori world view. The marae also provides a place where visitors can be formally welcomed to the campus and, in that function, serves the entire university community. However, while it can be booked for appropriate functions, it remains a marae first and foremost: “it is not just a building that can be used for whatever purpose … it is a marae, and we protect that very, very carefully” (Prof Margaret Mutu in Students of The University of Auckland, 2013 at 7:05 min). As on any other marae, the wharenui reinforces the prestige of the tangata whenua (home people—in this case Māori at the university and their communities) and “leaves manuhiri (non-kin-group visitors) in no doubt as to who is in charge, at all times, within the marae” (Tapsell, 2002 p.143). This assertion of control creates discomfort for some non-Māori and may cause adverse reactions to Māori demands for their own spaces – a phenomenon I have observed in my own institution, too. At the same time, this very assertion of control is indirectly the reason why the marae is in such high demand for the welcoming of international visitors. During ceremonial occasions, Māori is the principal language, creating a peculiar and fascinating atmosphere to which visitors will respond according to 440

whether or not they understand the language – most will not understand. Communication in Māori will then be summarily translated into English (which, outside of ceremonial exchanges is spoken most of the time in contact with the wider university and non-Māori external contacts). One of the best documented welcomes to international visitors is Jacques Derrida’s visit to Auckland during the Derrida Downunder conference in August 1999. The editors of a subsequent edited book give a partially quite detailed account of the pōwhiri (welcome) in their introduction (Simmons, Worth, & Smith, 2001), and Derrida himself later referred to it in his book on Nancy (Derrida, 2005). The editors describe how “Derrida, the guest of honour, is at the very front of the entourage passing through the carved gateway and across the first threshold, entering into the open space in front of the meeting house. One of the Maori women from within the group responds to the initial karanga chant and calls back, announcing the group's identity and the pre-eminence of the visitor in its midst. The karanga dialogue goes back and forth as overlapping women's voices seek answers and give information. Each group honours the other and pays homage to those it represents and those who have gone before. The karanga provides safe word pathway along which the manuhiri may pass without fear. The karanga is a call of welcome by women to the living, the ancestors and the surrounding environment. It also has the sense of a summons.” (p.17) Several pauses are mentioned: to begin with, the “manuhiri must stand at the gate and wait until the opportunity arises to show that their intentions are peaceful. Derrida and his group pause momentarily as the local kapahaka challengers advance upon them” (p.19). Later, about half way towards the meeting house, “the manuhiri pause, and with the tangata whenua weep or stand silent in remembrance of the dead. This is a time for remembering who we are and from whom we are descended. The karanga has invited the visitors to bring with them their ancestors; those who stand behind them. They are reminded that they are the visible manifestation of many people who have gone before.” (p.22) “The pause for reflection passes quickly and the manuhiri are again slowly drawn forward. The local people split their ranks and make a pathway onto the porch of the meeting house. The ancestor, Tane-Nui-a-Rangi, the whare whakairo at the university marae, reaches out his arms (the maihi or barge boards) to embrace us as we move over the threshold“ (pp.23-4). Most of those pauses occur at each and every pōwhiri. They produce what Böhme would perceive as changes of atmospheres and Benjamin described as almost invisible thresholds (see below). In each of these moments, different relationships are activated: with the land, between the people, with the ancestors and the recently deceased. The change of atmospheres also indicates a change of being: the welcome carried “Derrida and other distinguished visitors over the threshold of the tomokanga (entrance way), from the status of strangers to that of friends” (p.11). At the end of the pōwhiri, a “visibly moved Derrida” responded: “As soon as you authorised me to cross the threshold I had a feeling that I experienced a moment of hospitality which is for me absolutely unforgettable” (pp.26-27). Relationships with strangers and their integration into the local fabric are deeply woven into the tissue of space and time for Māori. Thus, Pakariki Harrison, master carver in charge of Tane-nui-a-Rangi, ensured the house is pan-Pacific as well as pan-tribal; for the posts, he carved ancestor-gods that are revered throughout the Pacific, navigators hailing from the Pacific, and Marquesan, Tahitian, Rarotongan and more general Pacific patterns, styles and objects. The marae is named after Waipapa, an early landing place for canoes in the area of Ngāti Whatua ki Orakei, tangata whenua of most of Auckland. This ensemble of language, objects, materials, relationships all produce, in the words of Stephen Turner at Auckland University, an “experience of being placed, momentarily made self-conscious” (quoted in Simmons et al., 2001 p.14). Turner highlights the relevance of experience vis à vis theory in understanding one’s own location. The marae complex was designed with assistance by Ivan Mercep, founding partner of one of New Zealand’s largest architectural firms. Mercep had previously been involved in the design of Hoani Waititi, an urban, non-tribal marae in West Auckland. Prof. Margaret Mutu of Auckland University describes him as “marvellous; he knew that he knew nothing about Māori architecture” (Students of The University of Auckland, 2013, at 2:15 mins).

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Mercep was also asked to participate in the design for the University’s Fale Pasifika complex, which opened fifteen years later. The opening signalled the ex-colony’s acceptance of its geographical and geo-political location in the Pacific, together with its special relationships with Pacific immigrants. One of the “more iconic buildings” on campus, the central fale (house) “plays an important role as the touch-point between the University and Pacific communities” (University of Auckland, n.d.).

Figure 2. Fale Pasifika with Centre for Pacific Studies and Business School in the background. Photo: University of Auckland

Conceived after the model of a traditional Samoan fale afolau, its high roof dominates the ensemble of smaller roofs over four modern buildings with academic facilities. More than a physical structure, the fale is a point of reference for Pacific people’s “activities that are central to their cultural expression”, providing them with “a sense of place and community” (University of Auckland, n.d.). While, without the Centre for Pacific Studies, “the fale is essentially a very fancy garage or a building”, its cultural context brings “the community of living together with the community of learning” (Damon Salesa in Students and graduates of The University of Auckland, 2013 at 1:30 mins). The number of Pacific students at Auckland University has grown rapidly from two in the early 1970s to close to 2000 in 2003. Like a village fale in Polynesia, the building serves different purposes over the course of the day, including teaching within the Centre for Pacific Studies, public lectures and assemblies concerning Pacific research or community matters, arts and craft workshops, and residencies. One approaches the fale across an open space like a malae. The transparent side walls open fully as folding doors, allowing fresh air to circulate and connecting the large open space of the interior, from floor to ridge beam, to the outside. The challenge for Mercep here was to design a building representing a traditional fale while meeting NZ building standards. A cultural advisory group from seven island nations, led by Albert Refiti (AUT University), met monthly to support the architects. Today, the Fale Pasifika provides “common ground for staff and students across the university and brings Pacific issues and identity into the heart of the University’s affairs” (University of Auckland, n.d.). Like Waipapa Marae, the Fale Pasifika has become a sought after venue for the reception of visitors, beyond the Centre for Pacific Studies. Its very Pacific flavour, in combination with its location right next to the Business School’s excellent facilities (on the other side, it borders on the marae), led to its selection by the University as the place to award an Honorary Doctorate to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in September 2014. Thus, the “aesthetics of atmospheres is capable of addressing a broad spectrum of aesthetic work which, in traditional aesthetics, occupied a marginal place or at most was labelled as ‘applied art’, ranging from architecture and stage design to design and advertising” (Böhme, 1998a p.114). For scenic character, life spaces and charisma, an aesthetics of atmosphere directs attention to what lies between: space. “The architect may share facades and views with the painter, but what belongs to the architect is the shaping of space with confinement and expanse, direction, with lightness and heaviness” (Böhme, 1998a p.114) in its relationality and embodiment, in time and place. 442

Spaces of appearance For Hannah Arendt, spaces of appearance are instances where a public realm is set up between free and equal citizens: the “organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose” (Arendt, 1958/1998 p.198). It is a space “where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not merely like other living or inanimate things, but to make their appearance explicitly” – a potentiality that needs to be actualized through deeds and words and vanishes with the disappearance of these activities. (pp.198-9). This seems to me to describe well the nature of marae and malae when activated by communal action. Its ephemeral character has affinity with Böhme’s atmosphere and the ways in which people explicitly appear as ecstasies. This is, maybe, where the similarities end, strictly speaking, but the term also holds a strong sense of potentiality befitting Waipapa Marae and the Fale Pasifika. In any event, as George Baird insists, it is necessary to construct a space of appearance large and diverse enough for all, and architecture can help to shape it, so that “people may act amidst the non-perishable traces of the acts of others” (van Pelt, 1995). Atmospheres, says Böhme, are perceivable through difference: we notice atmospheres particularly when we enter them or when they suddenly change – a typical threshold experience. Thresholds peculiarly separate and bind things simultaneously. They belong to both sides and exist through a tension that, in turn, holds open the difference between the two sides. If intercultural space is no longer structured by boundaries but by thresholds, the experience of strangeness or difference no longer needs to be one of harsh opposition. Thresholds shared between cultures can be experienced as catchment areas, in which incommensurable structures of order overlap and start to lose definition. Imagining intercultural spaces, then, no longer has to be bound to specific content and permanent fixtures but can rely on changing atmospheres. To an extent, the rather hapless attempts at adaptable interfaith rooms already grope in the direction of a nothingness of space that can change character and become different in-between. However, the regular proviso that all objects or atmospheres that are too specific have to be contained in cupboards or behind sound proof walls harks back to an either/or boundary of separation without connection and a notion of empty space to be filled. Architectural thinking mostly focuses on the design of walls and objects, tangible, delimited, hard things. Similarly, when we think of thresholds, we default to physical separations between physical spaces. Yet, many of the thresholds Benjamin conjures up in his Arcades Project are not marked by stones or steps – rather, they are marked by “the expectant posture of the handful of people” (Benjamin, 1999 p.862). Benjamin does not call this sense of expectation an atmosphere, but Böhme might. Benjamin remarked on the spatial extension of a threshold (Schwelle) as opposed to a boundary (Grenze): “Whereas a boundary is a line that separates, a threshold is ‘a zone of transition’” and the word schwellen (swell) indicates change and transformation (Benjamin, 1999 p.856).Thresholds, then, are zones in which transitions take place – while boundaries serve to halt them. The design of sacred spaces in Western architecture has always involved the production of particular atmospheres. Henri Lefebvre calls these spaces ‘absolute’ spaces, which arise from assigning special, religious or political qualities to particular sites in nature; “sacred or cursed locations”, they were set aside for rites and ceremonies, preserving and incorporating bloodlines, family, unmediated relationships, language and relationships with land (Lefebvre, 1991 p.48). “[P]rivileged or distinguished in one way or another”, they were “governed by a good many prohibitions” (240). Different from the early European temples, Christian churches and original marae in some Pacific islands, contemporary marae and malae have at their disposal sophisticated ways in which space can be temporarily set aside, made tapu, for particular purposes. Lefebvre emphasises that “[a]bsolute space has not disappeared. Nor does it survive only in churches and cemeteries.” (251). One of the abiding places of absolute space, he suspects, is the space of speech: “Both imaginary and real, it is forever insinuating itself 'in between' — and specifically into the unassignable interstice between bodily space and bodies-in-space” (251). One of the principal ways of setting space aside on a marae is through speech: be it the keening call and summons of the karanga, the whaikorero (speeches, lauga in Samoan), or the recital of whakapapa (genealogies, gafa in Samoan) – all ritual performative elements blended with songs and movement. This is the space of appearance that ceases to exist at the end of action and performance: what was during the pōwhiri a highly tapu ground turns into a lawn on which children play afterwards. There is, however, also an architectural organisation of permanent tapu (restricted) and noa (ordinary) zones: the paepae in front of the house, the pare (lintel) over the door, effect a strict separation of eating from dwelling and convening, of peaceful conversation from challenging performance. Eating is never permitted in the wharenui, and there are clearly assigned places for different groups of people – in this respect the

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reproduction of atmospheres of power and domination can be observed, like Böhme does about the role of Western architecture (2013 p.18). These structural assignments through architecture, objects and signs impacts the disposition of those approaching the building. They can impress, invite, humiliate, encourage, in- or exclude, guide or bar access. They are, at every moment, implicated in relations of power and co-determine not only the form of the building but the conditions of the space of appearance. The ability to produce conditions for spaces of appearance is, of course, not limited to Māori and Pacific cultures, or to the experts of aesthetic production in architecture, art, event design and scenography. Global in-betweens The two institutional spaces discussed here are embedded in an official discourse of intercultural integration. Both projects focused during the initial period on the internal needs of Māori and Pacific groups of students and academics who, involving their source communities, developed and consolidated their mana (power, authority) over the planning and occupation of the sites and buildings. Soon, both communities opened their facilities and events to fellow New Zealanders and international visitors. For some years now, these places are in high demand by the University and other public institutions as venues for the reception of prestigious international visitors. This is largely due to the well-developed local atmosphere, which, more than most places in the city, establishes a visible and palpable link to place – in Aotearoa and the Pacific. In his discussion of multi-faith rooms, De Velasco registers the “power of the global angle” and “its tendency toward universal models” that act against the forces of local thinking (2014 p.10) and advocates a “firm pragmatic approach” to produce “truly operational multi-use spaces”, anywhere. The result, according to Andrew Crompton, are usually “mundane spaces without an aura whose most characteristic form is an empty white room” – “God leaves the building” (2013 p.474). Are there viable alternatives to avoidance? Maybe religious spaces are particularly difficult to deal with – after all, those who are supposed to time-share are sometimes enemies (if not currently, then historically), and the rise of multi-faith rooms has less to do with reconciliation than with economics (de Velasco, 2014 p.4). But it is perhaps also worth considering that different religions are affiliated with different ways and abilities to see the world. For example, ki is closely affiliated with belief systems like Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, which not only have no God who could leave the building but also presuppose an ever-changing one-ness that includes all manifestations. Consequently, a different emphasis is put on the notion of individual and plural selves. Urban and institutional marae and malae in Auckland show how Pacific peoples, who have a far reaching tradition of crossing and re-crossing boundaries, reinvent ‘ancestral cultures’ in new locations (Bedford, 2001 p.2). When Pacific people today move, as they have for centuries, “along ancient routes drawn in bloodlines invisible to the enforcers of the laws of confinement and regulated mobility”, they pursue “world enlargement” (Hau'ofa, 1994 pp.156, 151). Epeli Hau’ofa emphasises the importance of “establishing new resource bases and expanded networks for circulation” but also of forging alliances with tangata whenua in the diaspora (p.156). Likewise, some Māori immigrants to the metropolis have set up immigrant-tribal marae which “have become examples of urban adaptation without severing ancestral continuity” (Tapsell, 2002 p.165). A confident engagement with atmospheres can first produce intercultural space, and with a confident outlook, the focus will be less on the distribution and availability of existing space but on what Hauofa credits Pacific peoples with: the enlargement of space. In order for a genuine co-production of intercultural space to occur, though, the overall production of space in a region must achieve more parity. In order for people to be able to participate in the production of spaces of appearance and of atmospheres, their ephemerality needs to be compensated for by some stability and permanence in a reliable home base. These are early reflections and suggestions. A conclusion has to be tentative, not least because I write this paper in Germany where I have no opportunity to discuss it with Māori and Pacific friends and colleagues. However, some hunches are perhaps useful. One is that Māori and Pacific spaces are what they are, temporarily or permanent, when key aspects like tapu and noa, or the relation of self and other in various forms, shape their atmosphere. The more permanent they are, the more they will also look like Māori and Pacific spaces, but looks come second – an aspect that has given these cultures’ spatial production great flexibility and endurance. This flexibility is paired with an ability to integrate strangers and to enlarge space through change, partially through highly developed ways of producing atmospheres. As Böhme argues, the production of atmosphere is “at every moment also the exercise of power” (1998 p.115) and Māori and Pacific spaces can only appear when their mana prevails. Western architectural theorists and

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practitioners do best when they listen to their non-Western clients and colleagues, emulating the attitude of Ivan Mercep, who helped design several marae and the Fale Pasifika, knowing “that he knew nothing about Māori architecture” (Students of The University of Auckland, 2013 at 2:15 mins). That threshold of encounter, of course, requires the very tolerance of uncertainty, and the trust in an original in-between, that Böhme finds lacking in Western ways of thinking. Cultivating them would potentiate the creativity inherent in every genuine encounter, in which the subject/object duality breaks down a little. Then, it becomes possible to let one’s boundaries be unsettled or diffused by the other – enlarging mental and spiritual space, and producing a genuinely different atmosphere.

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